> So, how do we stop people lionising "strong men"?
We have the solutions and have, perhaps not incidentally, discarded them in last 10-20 years:
Postmodernism - yes, I know the reaction to that outrageous idea - is at its heart a distrust of power as corrupting and its application as necessarily evil. Power is the Ring; Gandalf's mission was to stop the Enemy without raw power, but by defeating despair and arousing people's goodness, honor, and courage (e.g., the clearest example being Theoden).
Democracy: No kings, no aristrocrats, no masters; all created equal; liberty and justice for all; every one's opinion as good as another's; everyone is equally trusted to live their own life, make their own choices, choose their own words and religion; everyone gets an equal vote and is a valid juror. To assert greater power was a sin; megalomania was transparently ridiculous. Remember the humility of Washington, Lincoln, etc.
Eary American Protestantism (I'm open to better terms, and I can't define this one well): Humility, simplicity, service to others as the ultimate measure; charity; personal wealth almost an embarassment of greed; the Golden Rule; etc. I remember a New Yorker article about such a culture even on Wall Street in (iirc) the 1980s; high walls around homes in the suburbs were frowned upon as arrogant and not engaged in the community; the head of one bank wore a cheap watch and soon everyone else did too.
We have all that, we know all that. Those who want to seize power try - for obvious reasons - to say they are impossible or to ostracize them. The failure is that leaders who know better - who should remember Washington, Lincoln, Eisenhower, so many more - haven't bothered to pick up the banner from where it was dropped. I think that's all we need.