To those who'd say a bigger U.S. war budget would have stopped Putin...this sobering fact:

[Igel]

10. For a simple reason.

Because they opposite the overthrow of legitimately elected governments acceptable to the West as terrorism, and the overthrow of them by other countries' or organizations' agents is unacceptable.

As soon as you realize that we all let throw that subset of facts that support what we believe and want to believe while screening out or rejecting the importance of those that disagree with us, it all becomes a lot easier to grog.

A phone call between two people unrelated is taken as firm evidence of great involvement. Support by USAID and other US agencies is taken as conspiratorial, even if much less than other country's aid to other organizations in the country. The possibility of having US, EU, or others that we don't like is much greater than those actively benefitting from a situation--and if there's a change and the "bad guys" in the West don't really benefit, it's either forgotten or taken as a deeper game. (The problem with a nearly fact-free CT is that it can always be retconned and diddled with to bring it in line with, well, a nearly fact-free scenario but at the same time to make it more emotionally satisfying.)

Take all the "those aren't really Russian troops in the Crimea" rhetoric. After all, Russia denied they were Russian troops and they weren't wearing labels that said "Russian soldier", so whatever was reported coming out of the mouth of the Crimean self-defense had to be hearsay. Until Russia said it was withdrawing troops and equipment. Suddenly all the self-defense troops vanished, the heavy equipment sporting non-Crimean tags vanished, and Putin gave a speech praising the Russian troops and their actions in Crimea were professional, showed a high degree of coordination and readiness, as well as their level of physical training and equipment. The only people unsure were those who wanted to be unsure. That's how confirmation bias works.