Not defeatism, geography. It's easy to know where you want to get to but you'll struggle to find your way there unless you start by knowing where you are. Where we want to be is ahead of Barcelona. Where we are now is decisively behind them in terms of our status as a destination for top players. We are not going to close that gap by pretending we can win transfer tussles with the Catalans currently.
I made my point to argue against the feeling being expressed around Chelsea fans' forums that the club has been humiliated by losing transfer battles to Barcelona. That's simply not the case because it's perfectly natural for players to prefer Barca over almost any other club.
You are right that clubs do slide up and down the rankings, as I've referred to here and elsewhere, but the mechanisms of football entrench advantages for some clubs. Todd Boehly calls it 'structural advantage'. He said the fact that we hold some structural advantages over other clubs is one of the main reasons his group bought Chelsea. Well Barcelona hold some advantages over us and Liverpool hold some over Spurs. It is definitely possible for Spurs to outrank Pool in the short term, but it's harder for them to sustain it over the long term.
It's all very well saying we don't accept feeding off the scarps under the big boys table but what does that mean in practical terms? Buying a ticket to watch Raphinha's Barca debut and holding up a banner saying 'we don't accept this'? You say don't accept it, but accept is the wrong word. We don't have to like the situation but we do have to recognise the reality of it. At least we have to do that if we are ever going to do something about it instead of just shaking our fists at the world.
Let's; build a better team made up of players we can actually sign instead of daydreaming about ones we can't, flip our reputation for playing dull often ineffective football, and build a new stadium. That's how we start the journey to where you, and I, want us to be.