This week, another government shutdown seems inevitable, as a significant portion of the House Freedom Caucus believes, in the words of Tim Matheson in “Animal House,” that this situation absolutely requires a very useless and stupid gesture on someone’s part.

Which situation?

Before we get into that, it’s important to understand that any situation is appropriate if you’re determined to make a stupid and useless gesture.

In America, the term counterculture is associated with hippies, beatniks,

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It may seem strange to Ohemians and the like to think of themselves as conservatives as counterculture types. But the evidence is ubiquitous: from the crazy conspiratorial and secessionist talk to the bizarre if selective defenses of lawlessness and even violence that many right-wingers have abandoned the appearance of actual conservatism in favor of a permanent attitude of performative radicalism from the right.

On the fringes of the House Republican conference, you can find crazy stuff like this in abundance. But collectively, this countercultural impulse manifests itself most relevantly in an almost Freudian urge to lose.

Which brings us to the situation. Earlier this year, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy managed to hammer out a modestly successful deal with Democrats extending the debt ceiling until 2025. Given his incredibly narrow four-seat majority and the unstable nature of his coalition, this was welcomed at the time as a significant victory for McCarthy and the Republicans, apparently proving that the Republican Party could be a party of government.

And that was the problem for the radicals. When you’ve convinced yourself that the system, establishment, or regime is irredeemably corrupt or some kind of existential enemy, a common belief among countless countercultures for millennia has been to view any kind of deal as proof that you’ve sold out. The only way to prove conclusively that you have not compromised your principles, whatever they may be, is to lose. Martyrs are pure. Dealmakers are collaborators.

So the incendiary core of the Freedom Caucus declared so rolled in the debt ceiling fight and promised to use the budget process (for lack of a better word) to force austerity from, well, everyone. They claim McCarthy made them promises he didn’t keep, which may be true. They insist that government borrowing and spending is out of control and needs to be addressed, which is certainly true. Something has to be done.

Reasonable. But what?

Their answer is to enforce a government shutdown.

The only problem? This is perhaps the most predictable script of the modern political era. To no one’s shock, voters don’t like government shutdowns, and

wonderful statement,

the party that forces a shutdown is blamed for the government shutdown, while the other party, which in this case controls both the Senate and the White House, can easily score points.

And then a deal is finally made, but only after enough damage has been done to themselves. It’s like explaining: do as I demand, or I’ll hit my hand repeatedly with this hammer until you give in.

Or maybe it’s like the student radicals of the 1960s who occupied the cafeteria at Berkeley or Kenyon and got better library hours, more parking, and a

totally different

complete withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. Or perhaps it is in the Leninist spirit of the worse, the better. After all, people who make a living by catastrophizing are just like catastrophes. As McCarthy said Monday: It’s almost as if they want to lead you into a shutdown and then blame you for the shutdown.

That seems to be where their dashboard saint, Donald Trump, comes from. Over the weekend, he reiterated that the Republican Party must act as if it has all the power. On social media he posted: UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, THEN SHUT IT! Of course, Trump wants to use a government shutdown to negate federal charges against him and other patriots. Even if you thought this radical nonsense was a great idea, the idea that the country could get through a Democratic-controlled Senate and past the president’s veto is a childish fantasy.

But even the relatively more modest demands made by the holdouts are unlikely to remove these hurdles, which is again why it’s all so pointless and stupid. These antics will fail, but not before the reelection chances of many Republicans, including 18 from the districts Biden won, are damaged. Indeed, the most committed radicals come from extremely safe seats, which they are not afraid to lose. As for losing control of the House of Representatives, that would just prove how principled they are.

@JonaDispatch