WHAT COULD be more appropriate for this tired, old nation than an energy crisis? The middle east is too far away and Watergate is far too complex to get a grip on. But a lack of energy--now there's something the Geritol addicts who run this nation can really relate to.

Ever since the end of the second world war, the dizzying pace of technological advance has kept Americans just slightly off balance. The race to be the first one on the block to own this new supercharged custom cruiser or that new space-age color television set has tuckered this country out.

It's just as the Queen of Hearts said: "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Who could blame anyone for thinking all this running about is insane? Certainly no one can be blamed for being exhausted by the whole mad affair. The crazy foot-race that has become the key to post-war American culture, as we have discovered, isn't all that pleasant a sort of life.

Even though Americans were slow to face up to the import of the slaughters in Vietnam and the deceptions of Watergate, do not be surprised if Americans, especially older ones, are quick to rally around the energy crisis bandwagon. In the 1920s all this country needed was a good five cent cigar. Now, by the same logic, all the country needs is for someone to put a 50 mile an hour speed limit on the pace of life.

Of course the energy crisis, if there really is one, is all about oil, gas, sulfur contents, Arab export embargos and the like. At least that is what President Nixon would have us believe. Nixon would be the last one to suggest that the fuel deficit has anything to do with the style of life in this country, the frenzied way we consume power and energy, the structure of the oil companies or the foreign policy that produced the Arabs' oil embargo policy.

The experts want us to believe that the problem is purely a technological one, and that it can be solved by the experts in purely technological ways. But the people, tired and tuckered out, know better; they cannot help but know better. When you run a marathon race all day long you get tired out; there is no way around it. You could try to push yourself and discipline your mind to ignore the fatigue, but when there's no pot of gold at the finish line or even no finish line in sight, what sense is there in struggling to stay in the race anyway?

The nation is learning, as Alice did when she went through the looking glass, that there is little sense at all in the mad dashes of a hyperactive culture. Advertising agencies, the first to become aware of changing sensibilities and the first to exploit them, have perceived in Americans the desire to get back to a slower, simpler nature and they have been peddling their products along those lines. Clearly, advertisers aren't going to help anybody get anything except a new breakfast food in the pantry, but it is equally clear that the desire to get out of the race is a distinguishable trend in the American consciousness.

BUT HOW DID we get into the race in the first place? Theories of technological push and the need of capitalists to expand domestic markets suffice, but at this point of crisis, the theories and the questions behind them seem almost superfluous. Like the Three Stooges or Abbot and Costello often did on those shows we used to watch everyday after elementary school, America has unwittingly painted itself into a corner--into an insane and unpleasant style of life--and the point now is to get out, even if it means getting our shoes dirty and messing up the floor a little bit.

The problem is certainly not only one of keeping up with the latest inventions. There is the constant pressure to struggle for a few extra dollars of income, even though after a certain plateau is reached money has little bearing on happiness. And once the money is earned there comes the burning desire to find new ways to spend it and eke just a little more pleasure out of it. These and other things keep us on a treadmill, expending not only endless amounts of oil and gas on unsatisfying enterprise, but wasting our very humanity itself.

The energy crisis is indication that we can't afford to keep the treadmill running forever. The resources it demands just aren't there any more. We don't have much more to show for the resources we've already spent on maintaining the frenzied pace of American life than an industrial system that is in sore need of repair and a lot of exhausted lives.

How will the Geritol addicts deal with the energy crisis? For now they will probably make up some new lies about iron-poor blood and expect America to leave everything up to the technological whizzes who have brought us where we are today. There is nothing wrong with this country that a few atomic-energy plants can't cure, the Geritol addicts will say. And they will rush into the exploitation of new resources without thinking twice about little niceties like the environment or quality of life in this country.

The lies will not work forever. The fatigue that plagues this nation is deeply felt and it makes the truth of the situation too hard to ignore. If the country is running down, no charlatan's patent cure can revive it.