"We need a word..."
Although I'm sure there are more clever ones, I'd go with "imperialist" (or, as a close second, "feudalist") Seems to me that the mentality of the Bush/Cheney junta is pretty typical of an imperial power that sometimes waxes sentimental (in the cheap sense of the word) over suffering in other parts of the world, but at the end of the day is primarily concerned with its own gratification. When one begins to see one's culture (and, by implication, oneself) as the world's center of gravity, why wouldn't a domestic wedding carry more weight than an occasional cyclone in some two-bit country that most Americans couldn't find on a map?
And of course the imperialist/ feudalist virus infects most of us. E.g. we're all clamoring for a suspension of gasoline tax now because we're entitled, goddammit, to pay lower prices for gasoline than just about any other country on earth. It makes no difference that escalating prices at the pump are a portent of what James Kunstler calls the end of the oil age rather than corporate price-gouging. We don't give a fuck. All we want is cheap gas, and it's up to the rest of the world to supply it. The Bush wedding or Joe America's fossil-fueled lifestyle: how could these NOT be more important than anything else?!
By the way, James Howard Kunstler discusses the implications of the end of the oil age (which began in 1859 and is almost over) in his The Long Emergency (NY: Grove, 2005). God! I wish it was required reading for elected officials, high school and college students, media talking heads, Christian fundamentalists, and the Bush/Cheney crowd (not to be confused with "elected" officials).
How about in a twist of their own, utterly ironic label, we call it "dispassionate conservativism"?
Siddhartha?
Laurel (Laural?) irony.
lauriante
laurianate
Commenting by HaloScan
