Empty Signifier
By 
Andrew Sullivan: “I dare you to make a more nonsensical Foucault reference.”
Bobo: “hold my breadsticks from the Appelbee’s salad bar!”
Second, the Democrats focused all their energies on those all-important Michel Foucault swing voters. When Democrats get all excited, they go into a hypnotic trance and think the entire country is the Middlebury College faculty lounge.
Actually, Democrats pretty much never do this; if anything, Democratic politicans are more likely to see the electorate as more conservative than it is. But anyway, what incredibly esoteric and unpopular policy, with no popular resonance, are Democrats allegedly pursuing?
The American story is a story of systemic oppression. Since the cultural discourse that privileges white hegemony is the world’s single most important problem…
Suggested questions for Brooks’s editor: “Which Foucault text has an argument that can be reduced to ‘the cultural discourse that privileges white hegemony is the world’s single most important problem?'” “Your reading of Foucault as seeing power relations as straightforward and one-dimensional is quite creative and innovative, in a way those Vox guys never are. Can you provide some textual support for this analysis?”
Anyway, I can’t wait for the obscure unpopular policy position Democrats have taken despite the fact that it only appeals to poststructuralist academics to be identified.
of course it’s worth shutting down the entire government to take a stand on DACA.
Are you shitting me — DACA? A policy supported by massive supermajorities of the American public, trying to stop injustices that are very easily understood? That’s the example you’re going to use of Democrats being out-of-touch elites?
It’s not that people don’t like DACA. They do. It’s that they just don’t recognize themselves in a party that thinks it’s worth closing the government, destabilizing the economy and straining the military for it.
Oh, I see. So there’s no dispute that DACA is very popular, it’s just that once you apply Murc’s law and blame a government shutdown primarily caused by Republican hostage-taking exclusively on the Democrat Party, then the shutdown over DACA is unpopular. Unfortunately for Brooks’s projection, the public generally blames the Republicans for the shutdown, and in addition a majority of the public thought protecting DREAMERS would be worth shutting down the government for. There sure are a lot of hardcore Foucauldians out there!
Clearly, Brooks needs to stop appealing solely to MICHAEL OAKESHOTT SWING VOTERS and get in touch with the American people.