Psychology
fromPsychology Today
1 day agoHow Unmet Psychological Needs Quietly Undermine Democracy
Democracy requires psychological regulation to thrive, as unmet psychological needs can erode democratic life.
Burke's was a broadside that not only excoriated the social upheavals effected by the French revolutionaries and (by extension) commended by Marx, but the continual economic and social instability prized by modern liberal economic philosophy and practice. Against a new class of elites-mainly, an alliance between ideological progressive theorists and a rising financial oligarchy-Burke urged protection of the stability, tradition, and social continuities vital for the flourishing of ordinary people.
Almost a quarter of the world experienced democratic backsliding, or a shift towards autocratization, in 2025, and six of the 10 newly regressive countries identified in the research are located in Europe and North America, including G-7 powers such as Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The real Führer is always a judge. Out of Führerdom flows judgeship. One who wants to separate the two from each other or puts them in opposition to each other would have the judge be either the leader of the opposition or the tool of the opposition and is trying to unhinge the state with the help of the judiciary.
The very same European leaders and anointed members of the Blob expressing outrage about Greenland were largely silent or supportive as Trump bombed Iran and Nigeria, abducted Maduro, and continued to aid and abet Israel's genocide in Gaza.
"It's an absolute insult to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein that this government's only response is to ask the Cabinet Secretary for a 'review. "This isn't a case for an HR review; it is a case for the Metropolitan Police. "Peter Mandelson has clearly broken the law and stands now accused of serious misconduct in a public office, and he should be tried for his offences."
Guterres stressed that this assault is not coming from the shadows or by surprise. It is happening in plain sight and often led by those who hold the greatest power. He did not mention specific situations although he did voice outrage at Russia's war in Ukraine, where he said more than 15,000 civilians had been killed in four years of violence. It is more than past time to end the bloodshed, he said.
This is the policy the Trump administration uses to banish immigrants to countries that are not their home countries, and to which they often have no connection whatsoever. The Trump administration does this without giving people notice of where they were being expelled, or an opportunity to object to being expelled there. That clearly violates the Convention Against Torture, which bars the government from deporting people to any country in which there is substantial reason to believe they will be tortured or killed.
A student-led coalition has gathered more than 2,600 signatures from law students, legal academics, and law student organizations across 109 law schools calling on Congress to pass the Federal Officer Accountability Act. As the Department of Homeland Security disappears suspected migrants without due process, arbitrarily harasses citizens, and point blank kills innocent people on camera, a shocked public has learned what lawyers have talked about for years: the government has stacked the immunity deck to functionally shield law enforcement from accountability.
The Founders, in creating and nurturing our system of governance by and through the Constitution provided separate and distinct branches of government, the Legislative, Executive and Judicial and, further, provided for intentional, established and delineated checks and balances so that power was balanced and not able to be usurped by any one branch tyrannically against the interest of the citizenry.
Since Richard Nixon was forced to resign, powerful people in both political parties have worked assiduously to ensure that their leaders would escape the consequences of their actions. Trump has evaded punishment for crimes both low (campaign-finance violations, for which he was convicted, though he will serve no time thanks to his 2024 victory) and high (his attempted overthrow of the federal government in the aftermath of his 2020 election loss, for which he was spared by the Supreme Court's decision to grant him a kingly immunity).
In this new season, I'm asking how the Trump White House is rewriting the rules of U.S. politics, and talking to Americans whose lives have been changed as a result. Today's episode examines the destruction of the civil service: the removal of professionals, and their replacement with loyalists. I've seen this kind of transformation before, in other failing democracies. Everyone suffers from the degradation of public services.