Glenn Jacobs sounds like the name of a serious-minded small-town Southern mayor with libertarian sensibilities but a stable worldview. That is until you realize that he spent the last three decades playing Kane, a character who can best be described as Michael Myers but obsessed with fire instead of sharp knives; Jacobs spent most notable years in the industry playing a character who wore a mask and only spoke in monosyllabic phrases (before that, he played a maniacal dentist).

Meanwhile in Kyiv, Ukraine, the Klitschko brothers — one of whom also serves as that city’s mayor — joining combat battalions to push back the Russian invasion (I can’t believe I’m writing that sentence, and it isn’t the synopsis for an Oscar-nominated war epic). Tennessee has The Wrestler Formerly Known as Kane rooting for the Russians to give the left an exhibition in how the right will stomp out the weak-ass libs, or something.

Towards the end of his WWE career, Jacobs began hinting at following Jesse Ventura’s footsteps into the political ring, and he followed through in 2018. Since then, he’s been the mayor of Knox County, Tenn., which has a population of approximately 500,000 people. As most of the sane Western democratic world has rallied around Ukraine, Jacobs had a different, more disturbing tone to offer, and it sums up the current state of American politics.

Instead of calling for peace, Jacobs is rooting for Ukraine to get chokeslammed stomped out so he can affirm his authoritarian worldview. I was under the impression that conservatives envisioned themselves as defenders of democracy by embracing the Second Amendment, and that Red Dawn is their blueprint.

Also, since when is “The Left” surprised by Putin’s aggression? Democrats spent the last four years warning the world that the previous president was too obsequious to Putin and sociopathic authoritarian types. This part makes one question whether repeated head trauma has impaired Jacobs’ cognitive ability. AEW Champion Adam Page hinted at the same by replying to Jacobs’ tweet, offering links for humanitarian aid as well as a video entitled “10 Ruthless Chair Shots Kane Took to the Head.” Page might be onto something, because no superstar walked unphased through steel chair shots to the dome quite like Kane.

The toxic overconfidence spewed by Jacobs and likeminded politicians has led to world powers getting knocked to the canvas by weaker armies. Vietnam and Afghanistan, for instance, would disprove Jacob’s juvenile “might makes right” war theories.

Beyond that, laugh at Jacobs at your peril. Jacobs rooting on the Russians to “own the libs” shows just how right-wing media has poisoned the minds of its audience. Jacobs probably spent the last 20 years consuming all the right-wing talking points, and his tweet doubles as an insight into the thought process of the modern Republican. The Republican base has admired strongmen for decades, and in 2009, two professors published a book on the subject. They discovered that a surprisingly large portion of the American electorate had latent authoritarian views during their research. Eventually, that strand of the GOP would gain enough power to make themselves heard.

Since 2020, Republicans have been attempting the same propaganda Russians used to paint themselves as liberators of Ukraine, to embrace their “might” over elections. so paranoid about the future of democracy that he’ll adopt an authoritarian regime invading a European democracy to save the world from “the left.” Jacobs’ fantasies about crushing a smaller country under his heel might sound asinine, but it describes the agenda of the modern GOP. In their minds, they have the most guns, the most muscle, and the libs are a bunch of woke eggheads who will retreat to safe spaces when they attempt another takeover—kind of like how Jacobs associates Ukraine and woke culture. In doing so, he gives away the game. Kane was a 6-foot-7 slab of meat during his wrestling career who was undeterred by smaller opponents. Maybe he was telling us something all that time.