This one made it into the book. I wrote it around 2007-2008, when I was living in Southeast Asia and spending a lot of time noticing that the word “power” meant something completely different depending on which side of the Pacific you were standing on. It aged fine — the underlying argument is structural, not topical, which means it doesn’t date the way rants do.
Most Americans think of power as something you accumulate. Money, influence, followers. The more you have, the more powerful you are. It’s a transactional model, and it shapes everything from how people vote to how they understand why they’re losing. If power is accumulated wealth, then the solution to powerlessness is accumulation. Work harder. Win more. Get to the top.
This is not how power works everywhere. The Shan people of Thailand have a different concept entirely. So do the communities along the Mekong. So, for that matter, do most people who have never had the luxury of thinking about power primarily as a quantity to be hoarded. In those frameworks, power is relational. It flows between people and obligations and relationships, not into accounts.
The essay is an attempt to map power as a phenomenon rather than a possession. To ask: what is it actually, before we start arguing about how to fight it or redistribute it or dismantle it? Because if you walk into a fight against power without understanding what power actually is — where it comes from, how it legitimizes itself, what it requires from those it governs — you will keep losing in predictable ways. You will make arguments that land wrong. You will organize around tactics that the system has already built countermeasures for. You will mistake the symptom for the disease.
I was living in a place where this was obvious. Looking back at America, the confusion was obvious too.
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*This piece was expanded and collected in [Not My America: A Stranger in a Strange Land](https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-America-Stranger-Strange-ebook/dp/B0G3C44X7D/) — essays about America observed from the outside, by someone who left and couldn’t quite believe what he found when he looked back. Available in Kindle and paperback.*
**[Get Not My America on Amazon →](https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-America-Stranger-Strange-ebook/dp/B0G3C44X7D/)**
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**You might also like:** [It’s not a New America – It’s the same it always was](https://www.vagobond.com/its-not-a-new-america-its-the-same-it-always-was/), [Secret of ageing no longer a secret](https://www.vagobond.com/secret-of-ageing-no-longer-a-secret/), [The Newest Thing…Craigslist meets Youtube](https://www.vagobond.com/the-newest-thingcraigslist-meets-youtube/)
*Browse the full CD Damitio catalog at [indignified.com/books](https://indignified.com/books)*
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I called most of this chaos years ago. America is still unraveling — and the next chapters are already written.
If you want to understand what’s really coming (and why), read Not My America: A Stranger in a Strange Land. Available on Amazon.
CD Damitio writes at indignified.substack.com — essays on utopias, dystopias, and the spaces between. Free to read. No algorithm, no sponsored content. His books can be found on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/CD-Damitio/author/B001JP7NWA
CD Damitio writes INDIGNIFIED — utopias and dystopias explored. Free to read.
