Bruce Jenner’s journey to transgender sainthood was interrupted Saturday on the road to Malibu, and with it perhaps the Kardashian Klan’s hopes and dreams for achieving supremacy of the known universe. All of America was twerking at the news because that is what we do and who we are now. The nation’s attention these blizzardy days would have otherwise gone straight from the Super-bowl halftime hallucination to the stupendous narcissistic grandiosity of the Grammy Awards. America becomes, day upon day, one gigantic act of “performance art” geared to shocking a bourgeoisie that has dwindled so deeply that, curiously, there may be absolutely nobody left to shock.

Of course the Kardashians are a mere metaphor for what has happened to this country, and Bruce Jenner is a metaphor for what has happened to American men. Maybe that’s why they persist in the spotlight. It is a well-known fact that motorists on a highway always slow down to see just what happened at the grisly scene of the accident. We can’t take our eyes off these freaks and geeks.

The Romans, on their journey to decadence, lacked the voltage and the wiring to amplify the anomie overtaking them. We’re bathed and bombarded with the images of exactly how disgusting we are. People of WalMart, throw off your chains of debt, indeed! Imagine trying to govern a land of such vicious dolts. Well, here’s a news flash: no one is really trying — whether from a lack of conviction or courage or intelligence, or out of sheer contempt, it is hard to say.

It is heartening, finally, to see Europe attempt to creep away from the intrigues of our Klown Konfederacy at least in the current matter of Ukraine, that poor perpetually over-trodden land of potato-eaters lately torn asunder by America’s idiotic wish to wrest it away from Russia’s 1000-year sphere of influence. Merkel and Hollande stole over to Moscow last week to confab with Mr. Putin. They evidently omitted to inform the haircut-in-search-of-a-brain, Secretary of State John Kerry. Who would want that mule-faced ninny at the table? The Europeans are beginning to say some sane and arresting things, such as: Russia and Europe are part of the same civilization — note the implication that perhaps America is not so much in that club anymore. Perhaps it should be left twerking out on one of its fabulous lost highways until it is all twerked out.

Europe, of course, has its own problems and they are very grave, and they are hard to understand because they derive from a financial system grown so abstruse and impenetrable that the ancient black magic arts look like a game of Go Fish in comparison. At this late stage, they can only pretend to figure out where all the entwined obligations really lead, and what might happen if someone starts to yank on a thread somewhere. The question for the moment therefore is: can they continue to succeed in pretending? A sickening sense of look-out-below spreads through the sentient ranks. This week will be a doozy.

One thing is clearing up: Europe does not want or need to start a war with Russia at America’s insistence. What America needs is a war with itself, a war against the lazy narcissism that has left it susceptible to armies of grifters and racketeers, because ordinary people were too busy twerking and jerking to pay any real attention to the systematic dismemberment of their culture. Waiting in the wings is a whole category of human endeavor quaintly known as virtue, lately absent in the collective consciousness. What a shock it would be if Americans began to witness acts of fortitude and valor among us.

Reproduced with permission from James Howard Kunstler’s blog, Clusterfuck Nation. Kunstler’s books are available at the usual places. He urges you to support local bookstores.