I've kept an eye on continental social science since leaving university, and I must say that—for most practical reasons— it's useless. It is not, however, worth

I've kept an eye on continental social science since leaving university, and I must say that—for most practical reasons— it's useless. It is not, however, worthless (quite the opposite). You might be familiar with Feynman's story about how he was trying to decipher a social science paper, starting sentence by sentence, he encountered something like The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels Which he translated as "people read". He then continued "translating" the paper and figured out there was not much to it. Having been exposed (unwillingly) to many of these kind of papers, I've come to understand that they are abstractions. It's not just reading, it's how you receive all kinds of information through your eyes. You "read" people when you make judgements of how they dress, talk and act, you "read" objects in a store and decide if you want to buy them, and so forth. Critical theory authors are trained to understand that all interpretation comes from a culture. In understanding a foreign situation (say, the Syrian civil war) you must be conscious that you are looking at the problem through western eyes. These theorists tend to over-analyze things (they are the very embodiment of analysis paralysis) but they make an interesting read when you are familiar with the problem. It makes you feel like you've seen all the possible angles of a specific event. This is why I'm not surprised Washington would make use of them. If you'd like a gentle introduction to this kind of writing, I'd recommend Tzvetan Todorov. He exposes really complex ideas without the mumbo jumbo. You can make a fair judgement if it's horseshit or not (as it's clear he's not hiding behind obfuscated writing).