Think of a Piston in a Motor.....it moves up and down in a cycle.
The same with AC....its piston like power cycle doesn’t move the electrons very far, but, their movement is “powerful” of course depending on the amperage involved.
Direct Current (DC) on the other hand looses power over distance because of resistance....because it does “Flow” in one direction.
Tesla was ripped off by Westinghouse, Edison and JP Morgan who “bought” AC from him for a dime.
The big advantage of AC over DC is the ease at which the voltage can be stepped up or down using transformers instead of rotary converters or electronic methods.
Power transmission (both AC and DC) is best done at the highest practical voltage. For the same amount of transmitted power, at a higher voltage the current is smaller and therefore resistance losses are smaller. The conductors can also be smaller.
DC transmission generally experiences smaller losses than AC, but the cost tradeoffs between infrastructure and maintenance versus efficiency usually support the AC case, though the differences have narrowed as high-voltage, high-power solid-state inverters have become practical.
At the end-user point, the advantages of AC are overwhelming.
And, yes, Tesla was ripped off in a major way.