Psychology and Philosophy in Politics

What to do about getting politics right, about a just government? If one were to follow the formula set by Plato there would be philosopher kings, people adept in worldly knowledge and free of any material desires be they economic or military. This would hardly be a model for economic heads and government leaders whose power base is greatly tied to military deployments and economic expansion and the continued drive for “black gold”.

There has to be a better controls over the whims that certain politicians have of lately been exerting in the most powerful nation and that would be by getting them aware of how they encourage an emotional response to supposed dangers. One only has to look at what is going on as far as attempts made on business people traveling to unsettled areas around the world about how economic expansionism without fair inclusion among the locals drums up animosity.

People who are more deserving of knowing about national security issues are being fed as truths about national security, which are only partially true. Those controls can be rooted in what Plato referred to as psychological, a need, which can be paralleled, to what Freud later referred to as the id, ego and superego.

Today we see the results of electing a leader who pretends to be acting on the needs of his voters when he is only acting in the interests of his power base and the voting machine. It is almost as if we were living in an aura of “aristocratic” rule without the wigged aristocrats of the royal courts but the aristocratic air is still there and is something that Nietzsche himself referred to as the best form of being governed. Is this the way to get politics right?