WHY LIBERALS DON’T UNDERSTAND MIDDLE AMERICA: Matt Taibbi gets Thomas Frank, who wrote: “Why shouldn’t our culture just get worse and worse, if making it worse will only cause the people who worsen it to grow wealthier and wealthier?” Put another way, progressives are [culture] war profiteers.

No wonder our culture continues its slide into alienation, division, and coarseness. Middle America is under attack, which makes the Trump ascension entirely understandable. If progressives keep it up, they will deservedly fail much like Operation Barbarossa, exhausted, over-extended and suffering unremitting counter-attacks.

I don’t agree with all of his analysis, but Taibbi’s review of Frank’s latest book — “The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism” — should be required reading for all journalists, political junkies, elected officials, bloggers Left and Right, etc. etc.

Taibbi begins to remind me of James Burnham, the former leftie whose 1964 book “Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism” remains as relevant today as it ever was.