You major headline point is of course correct; the job gains are by no means mind blowing and it is silly to say otherwise. However, I have several problems with the way you argue the point later:

a) First you re-define a Depression to mean no upside in several places - but a Depression DOES mean a severe contraction actually. And therefore really your graph with the "we are here pal" note doesn't make a point at all because the current "depression" had no huge drop in real GDP - only a modest contraction frm 2009 to 2008.

b) Dalio & Prince say that boom and bust are over with all this Fed anesthesia ie money printing - - the Fed smooths things out with ever higher levels of Debt/QE - again - calling this the "Silent Depression" because of the lack of deflating&reflating is hyperbole. More like a "Zombie Economy" where anesthetized patients are kept on life support and "dead wood" is never cleared, at a huge cost per year to keep the Zombie Circus going.

You approach the same level of hyperbole of the press you criticize I think when you conclude: "The lack of upside is so pronounced, pervasive, and oppressive that in Year 13 of the Silent Depression, the growth in real GDP per capita trails what it was during both the Long and Great depressions." The contraction in the Long/Great Depressions was so much more dramatic, they were such deep holes, that yes they had % wise greater gains as they went from nearly dead on the table to getting a pulse again. By no means is our experience as pronounced, pervasive and oppressive as what happened in the 1930s. You can't mean it!