It is a straw man - you're justifying your suggested solution by comparing it to something that is already considered bad in the area. That's exactly what a straw man is.
You're suggesting the answer to "we need better startup time" must be "we need the best startup time possible"? In that case, Go is also bad. Everything should be hand-rolled assembler.
Many of us who actually run Clojure in production have been bit by this, and Clojurescript has been fast enough to alleviate the issue. Not a straw man, a community meme.
