One of the most overly abused questions asked is whether the proverbial glass is half-full or half-empty. To a cynic who, after all, is only an experienced realist, an eight-ounce water glass that is half-full contains four ounces of liquid, no more, no less. Determining optimism or pessimism from that observation is foolish. Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin had a more relevant tool: contradictions. These contradictions form a sounder basis for assessing the balance between optimism and pessimism in the US. These contradictions also help to explain why things have gone wrong in the US and are symptomatic of far deeper societal ailments. The US prides itself in its ‘exceptionalism’ and the uniqueness of its political and legal systems. For all of the bluster over democratic values, we are lucky if more than half of the voting public goes to the polls to elect the leader of the free world. We are mindful of individual rights and assuming innocence until proving guilt. However, the US has one of the largest prison populations in the world and the largest on a per capita basis. We spend more on our penal systems than on educating our youth. In the war on terror, the US maintains the strongest military in the world at a time when there is no obvious military rival, China notwithstanding. The US outlays on defence amount to nearly as much as the rest of the world spends combined. Unfortunately, the major dangers and threats to this nation are not all amenable to the use of military force. Concurrently, the president has been granted the licence to kill our enemies regardless of citizenship through drone strikes, originally intended to disrupt and destroy al Qaeda — an inherent conflict with due process. In current or constant dollars, the United States today is the globe’s wealthiest nation. Much of that wealth resides in the economic elite; perhaps five percent of the population hold well over a third of that wealth. Republicans argue that tax increases will destroy many of the incentives that create wealth. Instead, substantial spending cuts in the Federal budget are the best solutions for economic recovery. Democrats counter that spending cuts disproportionately harm the less advantaged and the elderly who are dependent on Federal healthcare, social security and other entitlement programmes. Hence, the wealthy should be made to allocate more of their wealth to underwriting and supporting the less fortunate. These and other contradictions have induced political paralysis and seemingly uncontrollable debts and deficits. At some date certain, the nation will be bankrupted by these fiscal imbalances unless…The unless is that until one party wins both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and 60 seats in the Senate, or, mysteriously, bipartisanship sets in, only a crisis possibly as bad as the depression will impel corrective legislation. The first lady correctly and forcefully advocates a healthy diet. We are told that one in six of our children go to bed hungry. Still, the Surgeon General reports that upward of two fifths of our citizens are obese or suffer from obesity — an interesting and stunning contradiction. Given the choice of exchanging citizenship with any other nation, Americans overwhelmingly will stay here. But that does not mean the US is a more perfect union or that we have not lost or are losing our way. The conditions for greatness and for exploiting virtually unlimited potential remain. Unfortunately, here are the mother and father of all contradictions. Our political system is broken. It may not be fixable if government cannot take self-corrective actions. The flaws and causes of this breakdown are cumulative and reflect a coarsening of society. Both political parties have gravitated to the extremes of left and right. Rationality, compromise and objectivity have been exiled to the nether regions by ideology. How to resolve these contradictions is not self-evident. Political revolutions will not work. Nor have noble efforts to seek bipartisanship. Political or economic crises will do as much damage as good. And hoping for a great leader to emerge is as naïve as seeing a glass as half full. Reality is harsh. The US is not in decline per se. It will remain a dominant power indefinitely. But future generations should not plan on better standards of living or rising expectations of earlier generations unless… The only realistic unless is technology. From history, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology was one way out of an economic wilderness. Three-dimensional printing, further revolutions in information, nano and genetic technologies, to name four, hold great promise. With most governments in irons today, the creative genius of the private sector could be solace for society. The critical question determining our future is whether broken government will obstruct, reinforce or stay out of the way of these creative processes that could reverse much of what has gone wrong. The writer is Chairman of the Killowen Group that advises leaders of government and business and Senior Advisor at Washington DC’s Atlantic Council