I suppose we are at the point where the glass is half full or half empty...
I am more on the empty side.
Our republic has survived for just about the expected lifespan of a typical democracy. The founders gave us a government like no other, but for the last 50 or so years the left has tried to make it just like Europe which is failing.
In the end we will fail but it was not the republic that failed, it was democracy.
Yes, we can fix it, but in my opinion it will take a civil war with the left and their needy gimmee's who have learned that it's easier to do nothing and expect to be fed and housed.
To use your empty glass analogy I would say that so far as electoral politics is concerned, the glass is bone dry and crawling with leeches. BUT, and this is the important point, there are a whole lot of other glasses, most of which are full. I also categorically reject this sort of binary choice between electoral politics and civil war. Which is just a choice between losing and losing badly with a lot of dead people. So let’s try sanity and not go there.
What I challenge people to do is to take a breath and think about what ends we want to achieve. Electoral politics is a tool for an end in my view, not an end in itself. It doesn’t exclude the use of other, better tools. If your objective is financial security, I would suggest that taking Financial Peace University is far more likely to achieve that than a lifetime of voting. If the goal is raising righteous children, then the weekend you spend volunteering at aChristian youth camp is going to deliver far more than a lifetime spent in electoral politics.