The thing to realise about Clojure is that it isn't an open source language like Python. It is a language controlled very tightly by Rich Hickey and Cognitect. Major work is done in secret (transducers, reducers, spec), then announced to the world as a "Here it is!" and then suggestions are taken. This goes well mostly, though it took a lot of outside persuasion that Feature Expressions weren't the best idea, and to come up with Reader Conditionals instead.

The underlying problem Clojure/Core has is their communication. If they would come out and explain their philosophy then people wouldn't get frustrated and confused when they expect the language development to work like other open source projects. Clojure's development is functioning exactly as planned. It's not a mistake.

A better way to treat Clojure is closer to a project at Apple (except for Swift). You can submit bugs, and make suggestions for future improvements, and if you really want to provide a patch. But go into it realising that it's not a community project, and you're much less likely to get frustrated.

With all that said, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and for the most part Clojure has developed pretty well from Rich's tight control. I'd love it if there was a Snow Leopard year for Clojure where the focus was fixing longstanding bugs and feature requests, and more focus on those in general, but the language is developing well.