As of this writing, the United States is over ten days into a partial federal government shutdown, and the nation is projected to reach its debt ceiling in just one week. And there’s no indication that Republicans in Washington are prepared to stand down from their “Obamacare takes a bullet, or else,” position in order to stop this slow motion train wreck.

Americans have cause to be frightened, and not only because governing by extortion is a new and disturbing trend in our nation’s politics. What is, perhaps, most disturbing, is that elections may no longer offer the kind of corrective they once did— at least not for the foreseeable future.

Before 2010, the voters had an effective response when politicians behaved badly. They could vote them out of office. But the new political geography makes that increasingly difficult, at least as it pertains to Republican members of the House of Representatives.

The 2010 election was a big one for the GOP, and it left Republicans in charge of state legislatures and governor’s mansions in a number of key states. They responded in several of them by devising brilliantly gerrymandered congressional districts, which maximized the number of Republican seats to an extent rarely seen before.

Pennsylvania’s 2012 election was a perfect example. While the state went easily for President Obama, and handily elected Democratic Senator Bob Casey, the state’s congressional districts went to Republicans by a 13-5 margin.

Such a tally wasn’t the result of ticket-splitting by Pennsylvanians who wanted a Democrat in the White House and the Senate, but decided they liked Republican policies better in the House. It was the Republican’s clever redrawing of district lines that packed lots of Democratic votes into a handful of congressional districts and spread just enough Republican votes out among the rest to carry the day.

This same trend was at play in a number of Republican-controlled states, and as a result, the GOP ended the 2012 election with a 33-seat margin in the U.S. House, despite the fact that 1.4 million MORE Americans voted to elect Democrats to that body.

Such an outcome isn’t unprecedented, but it’s happened only a handful of times in the nation’s history— and it’s likely to happen again in 2016, if not sooner.

Certainly, gerrymandering has been a fact of congressional elections since the nation’s founding, but the degree to which the GOP contorted districts during the 2010 redistricting is almost legend— and the Republicans who masterminded it have been patting themselves on the back ever since.

Such tactics may be good for the party that controls redistricting, but as we’ve seen since 2010, it can be disastrous for the ability of our nation to govern itself. While Washington has been roiled by partisan gridlock for almost two decades now, we’ve never faced the kinds of tactics we’ve seen since the 2010 rise of the Tea Party Republicans. Republicans and Democrats have squabbled for years over budget and policy, but neither side ever threatened (indeed, plotted for months, as recently reported in the New York Times) to intentionally harm the nation’s interests as a way to force changes in law that they cannot achieve through the normal legislative process.

Polls have shown that most Americans can see what’s happening here, which is why large majorities put the blame for our current predicament on House Republicans.

One might think that would threaten Republican control of the House, but don’t bet on it. Republicans can, for the most part, rest comfortably, knowing they’ll continue to hold the gavel in the U.S. House at least until 2022, regardless of how badly they behave— and how most Americans vote.

That’s what should truly frighten us all. The rise of a truly fanatical wing of a major party, combined with a rigged electoral system that denies the ability of voters to check the power of such zealots, is an unprecedented and frightening development in American history. Add to it the growing power of limitless corporate money in elections, much of it backing the new radicals, and the prospects for democracy in America have rarely looked bleaker. It all adds up to more mayhem from Congress for as far as the eye can see. Sadly, as bad as things are, they are likely only to get worse.