I think this narrative can help us to understand why what Trump is doing is so unsettling. And while he might never respect the sacred, we can defend against his transactionalism by refusing to put a price on the things we believe are sacred.

I have never seen any indication that Donald Trump considers *anything* sacred. To him, it's all fungible, it's all profane.

His transactionalism is not basic - his rejection of the sacred is. That's why he's transactional in spaces where others dare not tread.

And Greenlanders consider their connection to their land and national identity to be sacred. It simply cannot be bought. Even mentioning a 'deal' around their sacred home is offensive because it strips it of its elevated meaning and makes it Earthly, profane and fungible.

Where religion was previously seen as the sole domain of the sacred, it's actually everywhere. Even secular Americans consider the Constitution sacred. Those who leave the church might still consider Sunday morning to be sacred. Nature lovers consider natural habitat to be sacred.

Sacred things are elevated above the mundane world. They could religious symbols or flags. Or rituals or customs. Or your relationship to your favourite sporting team's colours.

What makes something sacred is that it cannot be bought or sold. Its value is beyond Earthly measure.

Sacredness isn't discussed much these days. It reeks of old religious or superstitious ways of seeing the world that modernity was supposed to have purged. But while modernity turned its back on the sacred, sacredness never left us.

What has struck me about this episode is that most Australians wholeheartedly support artistic freedom of expression and freedom of political speech.

Despite all the division, and cynical players seeking to exploit it, most people are willing to allow & listen to dissenting views. That bodes well.

It definitely looks like bombing, but it's far from being carpet bombing. I'd be careful about potentially hyperbolic language in the earliest hours of a conflict when reliable information is limited.

I wonder who she's trying to convince?

What this means is we might be reverting to a pre-liberal state of the world. A Bismarckian, imperialistic, realpolitik world, where power means more than liberal ideals.
That's a bad world for *everyone*, except perhaps a few elites in powerful nations.

It's only during the relatively short post-war period where borders became relatively stable and powerful nations restrained themselves from expansion and/or imperial aspirations.
The US was remarkable in that it (largely) choose not to use its military for expansion when it could have.