During the first Iraq war I was working as a programmer in Washington DC on classified systems and most of us even back then were like WTF are we doing going into this shithole country? Oh the OIL, that's why? Bush Sr. did what he did and got out relatively quickly. I remember driving around the Beltway listening to the radio on the way home from work and the reporters were live on the air with anti-aircraft guns firing in the background live on the radio. That is something that never happened during Vietnam. This was a new era of live reporting... Zoom ahead 10 years to Iraq 2 and watching Bush Jr. and all his cronies just blantanly making up shit to invade Iraq again. WMD that didn't exist. It made no sense. All of those memories are coming back with this Ukraine thing. In the day to day it makes very little sense, but from a geopolitcal chess match, it makes a lot of sense for Putin to do what he is doing, in his mind.

You are right. The stock market will crash and recover and only a few people outside the Beltway will care. We will see dead people and destruction for maybe years around this and eventually it will fade into the background. Unless we feel the pain ourselves, we will never care. This is why Trump will continue to win until this country is torn apart and people are fighting in the streets will we actually care who is president. Same with Putin.