I understand what you say perfectly well.
You're mostly correct for the first part.
For the second part, you quote what's been advertised.
Unfortunately, it's false.

I can, in fact, generate a longer block chain.
If you have a recent official release, you will not accept it, because "they" dictate your block chain.
If you don't, I can attack you.

Please do so and thus prove us wrong.

That's a healthy approach, but may I suggest a better one.

Allow me to save days of coding and weeks of number crunching by simply explaining what it is I could do.
I'd be glad to disclose this to the right audience at the right opportunity.

However, that's not the real issue here.
The issue is that there are multiple problems with the current design and implementation of bitcoin.
I can name at least 4 or 5 now.

I think we can fix this.
We can take bitcoin from the proof-of-concept stage to a real system that works.
What I'm trying to do here is find enough people who are interested in doing that.

irc://freenode/bitcoin-dev

Feel free to chat on the dev channel tentative. If you've found some kind of flaw or bug it would be great if you could let them know first.

I don't see what your arguing you said bitcoin is not peer 2 peer or p2p.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or work loads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application. They are said to form a peer-to-peer network of nodes.

Peers make a portion of their resources, such as processing power, disk storage or network bandwidth, directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination by servers or stable hosts. Peers are both suppliers and consumers of resources, in contrast to the traditional client–server model where only servers supply, and clients consume.

Clearly it is your stating that someone controls what block chain is used and that is not true you choose the block chain you want. Each block chain is a market. If you choose an attacking chain like yours you a joining a market where you will lose bitcoins.

Let's put it this way:

Suppose I change the code so that the only chain accepted is one in which I have all the money.
Then when the next version is release and everybody updates, the consensus is that I have all the money.
Would that be fair? Of course not.
I'm sure the other developers won't let that happen. They would revert my changes.

The point is that this is exactly what s_nakamoto did!
Well, except for the "have all the money" part...
I imagine he did this with the longest chain that was present on his node at some time.
And that makes his node unequally privileged and potent, to address your wikipedia-inspired definition.

When the checkpoint lockin system was implemented (a while ago), everyone had the opportunity to check that the included hash was correct. If it was not, no one would have updated and the change would have been rejected. Satoshi proposed a change, the participants voted with their CPUs, and the change was passed.

Obviously few people checked. They trust Satoshi and the other members of the community enough to take them at their word.

The checkpoint system is only "insurance" against unknown attacks. There are no known attacks that are prevented only by the checkpoints. So you can safely remove it if you want.

Clearly I am willing to bet my Bitcoin balance on the security of the system. There's no way to generate a longer chain without expending more CPU power than the current chain did, even without the checkpoints.

Feel free to make a different version with stupid rules. No one will use it.

I will if the changes are compatible with Bitcoin.

More importantly: I will not use versions of Bitcoin that have stupid rules.