Just because your friends aren't in that 30% doesn't mean they don't exist.
There is the old guard that understands very well that Russia is the greatest threat the US faces but they no longer have much of a voice. MAGA is in charge and they are fine with America's strategic defeat and the downfall of Western democracy.
This is a silly statement, for all of MAGA and the modern right's pitiful shortcomings.
Ukraine is profoundly low on the priority list of strategic American positions. Arguably even Crimea was more strategically important, and the US let that get annexed pretty comfortably when that happened. If Ukraine was seized it would set a terrible precedent for Europe - but the West doesn't have any strategic stakes there outside potential NATO candidates.
This is about destroying the principles of Democracy. That others should not look to America or the EU for salvation. He is creating a new world order with the help of China, Iran, and North Korea and succeeding. Look at the elections in the USA and EU. Parties that are sympathetic to Russia just like MAGA is sympathetic to Putin and Russia are gaining power. The West is on the cusp of a complete strategic defeat that will define the next century at a minimum.
Ukraine was a zero threat to him, but the ideals of the West were his destruction.
If you earnestly believe that, then he succeeded with his "Little green men" back in 2014. I legitimately think you are being hyperbolic about the "death of democracy" et. al. because the Ukraine incident is not unprecedented. The only thing that's new is America rolling over to give a shit - Crimea already proved to the world that the United States is more interested in domestic security than foreign affairs, and Ukraine is just reconfirming what we already know.
And look - while I personally want Ukraine to remain independent, you can't close your eyes to the realpolitik at play. America has virtually no reason to stand against Russia over Ukraine, besides to virtue signal the fact that they still consider Russia an adversary (which nobody really doubted anyways). Europe has a motivation to protect Ukraine to project their power and emphasize their defensive stance, but Ukraine also isn't part of NATO so not every nation is required to mobilize. Russia is the only power that can justify sending braindead-tier infantry waves into a meat grinder for the sake of recouping some USSR nostalgia. Nobody else cares enough, it's plain to see in the mobilizations.
> It's only worth is to show the West that they can't stop him and destroy the belief in the USA/EU/NATO/Democracy.
That's a very Western perspective. I think you're correct that this is what a lot of NATO members feel right now, but also NATO wasn't attacked. Russia has a lot of objectives in this war, and I feel confident that saying "sowing distrust among NATO members" wasn't the primary goal.
So the US decided to up their killings?
"The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World is a 2020 political history book by American journalist and author Vincent Bevins. It concerns U.S. government support for and complicity in anti-communist mass killings around the world and their aggregate consequences from the Cold War until the present era. The title is a reference to Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, during which an estimated one million people were killed in an effort to destroy the political left and movements for government reform in the country.
The book goes on to describe subsequent replications of the strategy of mass murder, against government reform and economic reform movements in Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere. The killings in Indonesia by the American-backed Indonesian forces were so successful in culling the left and economic reform movements that the term "Jakarta" was later used to refer to the genocidal aspects of similar later plans implemented by other authoritarian capitalist regimes with the assistance of the United States."[0]
There is something deeply wrong with talking like that about 2 million deaths.
Anyway, if you lump up all the 'communist' regimes, you should do the same with capitalist regimes too. Bengali famine gives you up to 4 million deaths for a start.[0]
For what it's worth, here's what Trump said about his relationship with Putin recently:
“You know, he was a friend of mine,” the former president told the athlete on speaker phone, as recorded in a viral video. “I got along great with him.”
Of course he's blatantly talking out of his ass, as usual.
Just like he is when he tells you that he's anti-war.
And yet, by not just saying "Look, we need to negotiate with Russia", but literally "We don't give a fuck about Ukraine, and we'll end the war in 24 hours" (meaning, if we are to take them at their word, very likely agreeing to the vast bulk of Putin's stated terms, including his demand for recognized sovereignty on the territories he is claiming) -- they are in effect signaling a promise to fully legitimize Putin's war aims, thus championing his very much "war-like" style of conflict resolution.