> If I could just get half of what's in Clojure trickle into the mainstream languages I'd be a happy bunny

Why aren't you a happy bunny with Clojure?

I have two observations to contribute:

* I noticed that my clients stopped caring about languages a long time ago. It is now known that there are many languages and more than one "right" choice. If asked about technology, saying you write software in Clojure, which runs on the JVM and uses Java libraries is accepted as a perfectly valid answer.

* Certain concepts have a fundamental complexity and cannot be simplified any further. Clojure got a lot of things right. Trying to "trickle down into mainstream languages" sounds like a hopeless task: you will end up either dumbing things down or making them difficult to use because other supporting parts of the language aren't there.