The wisdom of the american system was either you remove its absolute sovereignty and actively maintain the separation and manage it as the bounded dynamic of a growth engine, or it ossifies and becomes corrupt. The american experiement is yielding pretty much what the framers of its constitution predicted, and its enemies have had an instruction manual on how to do it from the beginning. The contempt I read that some people have for freedom is like listening to the inmates of a prison competing over who can be more compliant with the guards, and who reserve their rage for those who inadvertently humiliate them by comparison just by demonstrating some basic human dignity. Someone who sincerely uses epithets like "muh freedoms," by definition is not a peer or equal, and their upside is to become just somebody's liability or pet. It's an entirely relative ontology, and from the perspective of a mob. Corrupt the people, and their government becomes an afterthought.

Re: how do we ensure that the government's Executive power is used for good? We can't ensure it. But not voting for an utter imbecile like Trump sure as hell is a good way to make it more likely!