There is no end to Britney Spears. There is no end to Donald Trump.

The blonde nightingale was held captive in a prison of paper, paper bonds of conservancy, her father the cruel jailer.

Former President Donald Trump is held behind a wall of ballots, built by a majority of Americans.

Britney is free at last, great stardom almighty free at last! Vegas beckons like a glittering, golden halfway house. In the meantime, she showers America with a thousand kisses in the form of half-nakey pictures on Instagram.

Trump remains behind the walls, choking on a diet of ballots and water. His supporters tried to storm the prison, and they got inside and then were driven back by an underwhelming show of force.

Britney is deliciously free and every day, oops, she does it again on Instagram as millions of Americans come to know her body as well as they know the landscape of their own kitchen counters.

And trouble in Ukraine beckons us all.

Trump tin-cans around the country for spare change and applause, dragging Bill O'Reilly on a chain, like a trained bear without the muzzle.

Like America, Russia is boozed-soaked and reeling from drug abuse, but Russia's leaders have a persistence that can survive for generations as they seek to return their country to its former magnificent sweep of empire.

We're adventurers, we Russians and Americans, poking our bear's snout and eagle's claws into Afghanistan or Iraq or some other damn place we will eventually have to leave, chased out by an ugly citizen fighting force that doesn't even do much saluting, unknown places where every square mile is the tomb of the unknown soldier.

Manifest destiny all over the world, and Britney shining like an overripe plum as Trump bellows at five acres of troops in Red Square and Vladimir Putin markets his own brand of vodka to the alcoholics of Iowa. The people kiss the ground in reverence.

No. That's not how it goes. It only seems that way as leadership melts into celebrity, and the creed for this millennium can be printed on the front of a T-shirt or a trucker hat. Everything is a slogan, and every kiss becomes a wolf's bite, and nothing is serious, and the cat food section of the local grocery store yawns with empty shelves.

Blinking amid the graves at the end of The Black Death, my European peasant ancestors hitched their sharp-hipped animals to the plows, and put in another crop of small potatoes. They'd seen the end of the world, and clawed their way over the hump.

Which is how I ended up 20 pounds overweight, in a warm house with a smartphone and some Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby in the freezer. I am at the end of the funnel through which all of history's inventive brilliance flows.

I am watching Britney and Trump and Ukraine, and I am scared, wondering if I can get a crop of potatoes going in the side yard of my house. My wife is younger, but I'm stronger. Who gets to pull the plow?

My computer is intuitive. I am not. I can only watch and pay taxes and work and suffer selfish spasms of worry about my stock portfolio, which does not contain enough money to send me on a joyride into space.

The world is always ending. The crazier preachers can give you a date. The second Tuesday in March. Just past noon.

It doesn't end. Not all at once. Everything gets slower, and more troublesome, and more frightening, but it doesn't end. And one day, you're over the hump, fingernails broken from clawing your way up the other side, and it's time to start thinking about potatoes again.

The astonishing thing is, if I look into the eyes of Britney Spears, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, I see the same look you see in the mad eyes of a hawk.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Devil's Elbow: Dancing in The Ashes of America." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.