'Check the power' is a naive and impossible solution that has been attempted by essentially every human civilization since the dawn of time and has never, ever worked. Sometimes you just need to recognize truth when it smashes you in the face again and again over thousands of years and accept that we need some way to deal with it.

Also are you really advocating only one line of defense against unchecked power? "Just trust that people with power won't abuse it" isn't good enough and it's never going to be, but that's what you're advocating.