We’re bags of bacteria, made up of cells that are bags of mitochondria.

For the most part, yes. But also, I think if you dig into the details, it's less that bacteria have the upper hand, and more that we've reached a truce with the bacteria.

A lot of bacterial species need us to provide the environment for them to live, and our immune systems are pretty paranoid with our gut bacteria, especially if they getting too close to the intestinal walls. Also, our bodies are pumping out bacterial-killing compounds constantly.

I would describe the situation as that our bodies can't kill every bacteria, and bacteria can't kill us (not easily, anyways), so we've reached an agreement that as long as the bacteria stay in their lane, they can stay, and we might consider doing some trading at a distance

Wait till you hear about this:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43674270

Just thought this after the made of worms post.

Don't leave us curious like that!

Our gut bacteria is vital so are we eating so they can process it for us or are we eating to feed them?

Commensalism :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commensalism

Lots of these bacteria probably exist without us. We can't exist without them but we do make a very nice house where they can live.

While some bacteria definitely can, there are others that are so adapted to building colonies inside of us that they can't really survive outside of a mammal or human host. You can carefully create the lab environments to allow for it, but that is against the spirit of the question. My gut says ( ;) ) that anaerobic bacteria that evolved for mucosal colonization are likely to fit into this group.

Meanwhile it is possible to survive without much of a microbiome, but you end up having trouble with digestion and you are susceptible to infections since the surfaces don't have any residents and are "available". Newborns have low microbiome diversity and build it up rapidly after birth, and people on sustained antibiotic treatments tend to lose a lot of their microbiome.

So they keep us around.

Here is another fun one, the symbiogenesis theory.

The mitochondria was likely an independent prokaryote (bacteria) that was taken into eukaryotic (plants / animals / etc) cells.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis

Even now, the mitochondria has its own genetic material and replicates somewhat independently. So if you went in and removed all of the mitochondria from a cell, it wouldn't be able to make a new one. That is also why your mitochondria will match the mitochondria from your mother, since the egg cells come with mitochondria while the sperm cells don't.

JFK JR gargling frog voice

Aha, I see you’ve reached enlightenment as wel, welcome brotherly overlord home.

May you thrive and follow in the footsteps of our great example here.

pulls dead Trump up next to him weekend at Bernie’s style

You see the illusion is that he’s no longer alive, but in reality they are only getting started.

Where fucking ugly bags of mostly water for breeding microtisms. How quaint.