Under normal circumstances, Democrats’ fierce internal disagreements, clumsiness with messaging and lack of any megaphone that matches President Trump’s would convince me that they can’t win the government shutdown.

But under circumstances as abnormal as these? They have a shot, because whatever their ineptness, it’s rivaled by Republicans’ incoherence.

Consider a remarkable interview that Senator John Thune, the Republican majority leader, gave to Jordain Carney of Politico last week, as many federal workers were furloughed and many federal services were halted. Pressuring Democrats to shelve their demand that pending Medicaid cuts be restored and Affordable Care Act tax credits continued, Thune warned them that the shutdown was emboldening and unleashing Russell Vought, Trump’s dyspeptic director of the Office of Management and Budget, to proceed with his cherished dream of destroying programs that many voters hold dear.

“We don’t control what he’s going to do,” Thune said ominously.

Translation: Work with Republicans in Congress to save America from Republicans in the White House. It defines oxymoronic. Subtract the “oxy” and it fits that bill, too.

While Thune and other Senate Republicans insist that their Democratic colleagues pass legislation to continue funding the federal government and thus reopen it, Trump and Vought veritably cackle with glee about an “unprecedented opportunity” (the president’s words) to emaciate the federal work force and starve federal projects. Trump even posted a taunting, absurd video, set to the tune of the Blue Öyster Cult classic “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” in which Vought is the fearsome emissary of death — cape, hood, sickle and all. Trump taps a cowbell; Vice President JD Vance plays the drums. As I said: absurd.

So Republicans in aggregate are saying that it’s irresponsible of Democrats to interrupt the functioning of government, but that the government should perform many fewer functions. They’re presenting themselves as the protectors of government while staging an assault on it. With one hand, they’re wagging a finger at Democrats for inflicting temporary pain on Americans; with the other, they’re waving a pom-pom at the chance to inflict lasting pain on them. I guess both gestures involve extremities, but that’s where any consistency ends.

And they’re not doing any of the above quietly or slyly. They’re doing it flamboyantly and crudely, by which I mean on social media. They’re doing it punitively, as Trump and Vought exult in sticking it to programs favored by Democrats and states run by Democrats. By just the third day of the shutdown, the Trump administration had announced the elimination of nearly $8 billion for clean-energy projects in 16 states that voted last year for Kamala Harris, the freezing of $18 billion in funds for infrastructure projects in the New York metropolitan area and the freezing of another $2.1 billion for such projects in Chicago.

While such irreverence and vengeance have their ardent MAGA audience, they offer nothing to voters in the middle — you know, the ones who may well decide the most competitive House elections next year and who are smarting from, if not seething about, grocery prices that have not, as Trump promised, come down.

There’s at least some slender hope for Democrats here. I don’t think we’ll know for several days how the shutdown is really sitting with voters, whose feelings about it — including whom they deem culpable — will morph as it grinds on. But in a Washington Post poll last week, 47 percent of respondents blamed the shutdown on Republicans, while 30 percent blamed Democrats; another 23 percent weren’t sure.

A CBS News/YouGov poll published on Sunday showed a less stark difference in the apportionment of responsibility, though Republicans still fared worse. Thirty-nine percent of respondents faulted them, while 30 percent faulted Democrats.

But those numbers shouldn’t give Democratic leaders too much comfort. Recent history suggests that the party that prompts a shutdown — in this case, Democrats — is usually most bruised by it. In addition, the party’s reputation is in tatters. An average of recent polls gives Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader, an approval rating of about 26 percent. Trump’s is above 40, and his methodical, mischievous, relentless domination of public attention makes it nearly impossible at times for Democrats to be heard, let alone to make their case.

Also, what is that case? They haven’t entirely worked out their talking points, in part because opinions differ sharply on what Democrats should emphasize. Their overarching protest against Trump’s authoritarian desecration of the Constitution and consolidation of power? Or their specific fight to preserve affordable health insurance for millions of Americans who could soon lose coverage because of the One Big, Beautiful Bill that Republicans passed several months ago?

I’m noticing more attention to the latter; it’s what Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, stressed on Sunday on the NBC News show “Meet the Press.” And there are risks to that approach, which sounds an alarm about an imminent but still theoretical disaster — only some of the dire consequences of Trump’s showpiece legislation can be felt already — while taking away federal services and federal workers’ paychecks in the messy here and now.

But Republicans can hardly shame Democrats for that when the Trump administration is focused on how many of those services and paychecks are needless. Besides which, Republicans are on the wrong side of public opinion about health insurance, a fact evident in Thune’s and other Republican lawmakers’ assurances (no doubt empty) that they’re willing to negotiate with Democrats about health care once the shutdown ends.

A KFF poll released on Friday showed that 78 percent of Americans supported the extension of A.C.A. tax credits while only 22 percent opposed it. Among independent voters, the split was 82 percent to 18 percent. That doesn’t tell me that Democrats will emerge from this face-off with tangible concessions from Republicans or — an equally important dynamic — that their standing with Americans will be improved by their stand now.

But it does tell me that the sadists in the White House should be doing less feting and more fretting.

For the Love of Sentences

In The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik visited a new sanctuary in Philadelphia for the artist Alexander Calder’s work and got a tour from one of Calder’s descendants, Alexander S.C. Rower: “He treats it less as the museum it is not intended to be — or even the ‘cultural space’ it advertises itself as — than as an underground menagerie of eccentric animals, each with a temperament of its own. The mobiles are Rower’s untamable creatures, swinging close to heads, shaking and shimmering unpredictably. He delights in their waywardness with the proud wariness of a zookeeper showing off his exotic charges.” (Thanks to Madeline Bauer of Victorville, Calif., for nominating this)

Also in The New Yorker, Jessica Winter read the infamous Jeffrey Epstein birthday book so that you and I don’t have to: “Sometimes it’s like you’ve discovered a rich man’s contract with the devil, and next to his signature, he’s drawn a little penis cartoon.” (Matthew Ferraro, East Providence, R.I.)

Rachel Kushner recalled a long-ago episode of tress distress: “I was trying to get my hair to look like Candy Clark’s in ‘American Graffiti,’ poofy and playful. The effect was disastrous, my hair crimped weirdly, with sections shooting out in different directions like the discordant notes of an orchestra tuning up.” (Gail Saiger, Victoria, British Columbia)

And Kelefa Sanneh, reporting from a recent Bad Bunny concert, described an ecstatic fan who “danced so vigorously with a decorative plant that he seemed to be trying to pollinate it.” (Bob Marino, Paris)

In The Los Angeles Times, Christopher Goffard tried to make sense of a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s rambling: “As he sat down to face questions from the feds, his sentences traveled winding paths through vague precincts to fog-filled destinations.” (Robin April Dubner, Oakland, Calif.)

In The Guardian, Bryan Armen Graham commiserated with the polite subgroup of American fans at an annual Europe-versus-United States golf tournament, who were too often “drowned out by the performative tough guys in flag suits and plastic chains who treat the Ryder Cup like a tailgate with better lawn care.” (John LeBaron, Acton, Mass.)

In The Dispatch, Nick Catoggio regarded the marks that President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made to military leaders last week as “a case of two men who radiate neurosis about their own toughness lecturing a roomful of actual tough guys about how to be tough. It had the feel of Pop Warner players scolding a group of N.F.L. linebackers about the importance of hustle.” (Glen T. Oxton, Mamaroneck, N.Y., and John Sabine, Dallas)

In The New York Review of Books, Martin Filler puzzled over a loin-located leitmotif in the memoir of Gene Pressman, the Barneys heir: “Among other quirks, his fixation on male gonads verges on the pathological. This book mentions balls more often than all of Austen, Thackeray, Trollope and major league sports put together.” (Sarah M. Kraaz, Northampton, Mass.)

In The Atlantic, James Parker reflected on the disparate poetry of Louis Ginsberg and his son Allen, a Beat Generation icon: “It’s as if the father, with care and quiet formality, has chiseled open this discreet portal to the divine, only to watch his son go rocketing through it with his buttocks on fire.” (Nancy Qasim, Chicago, and Roberta Hatcher, Pittsburgh)

In The Times, Dwight Garner weighed in on “Shadow Ticket,” Thomas Pynchon’s first novel in 12 years: “Alongside Émile Zola’s ‘The Belly of Paris,’ it is perhaps Western literature’s Great Cheese Novel. (Though Pynchon often spells it ‘cheez.’) It’s as if he’s out to make America grate again. Whereas Zola sang of Brie ‘like melancholy extinct moons’ and compared a round of Gruyère to ‘a wheel fallen from some barbarian chariot,’ Pynchon finds in the industrial production of curds and whey enough paranoia, satirical and otherwise, to power a midsize city, perhaps one in Wisconsin.” (Harry Kloman, Pittsburgh, and Mike Donohue, Wickford, R.I.)

Also in The Times, Sam Anderson evoked the magic when the movie star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s face lights up: “It is a smile that makes you feel as if the sun is setting over an undiscovered tropical beach on which 10,000 baby sea turtles are about to hatch.” (Kai Schmoll, Asheville, N.C., and Chris Watson, Barrington, R.I., among others.) Sam was equally dazzled by the bulking up that the already bulky star did for “The Smashing Machine,” his new movie: “His thickness here is unbelievable. Each of his thighs should probably be listed separately in the final credits.” (John FX Keane, New Providence, N.J.)

Tom Friedman despaired over Trump opponents who tell themselves that merely ranting on X or pressing “the like button on a post from their favorite liberal influencer” is effective: “Thank God social media was not around for the women’s rights or civil rights movements.” (Conrad Macina, Landing, N.J.)

And John McWhorter analyzed the president’s loopy language: “Even Trump’s most positive-sounding coinages are acts of a certain kind of verbal aggression. I sometimes stop to marvel that the House passed something with the actual official title the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act. That goofy bark of a name is a boisterous clap back against opposing views, an attempt to drown out inconvenient facts with braggadocio. It is a linguistic snap of the locker room towel.” (Matt Masiero, Richmond, Mass., and Sue Hudson, Simi Valley, Calif., among many others)

To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.

What I’m Watching, Writing and Doing

• I felt a twinge of dread as I sat down — in a good old-fashioned movie theater! — to “One Battle After Another,” because the critical raves for it had created expectations so high I didn’t see how it could meet them. It did — and then some. It’s easily the director and writer Paul Thomas Anderson’s best work since “There Will Be Blood” in 2007. Focused on a group of leftist revolutionaries and the messy ways in which their pasts dog them decades later, it’s at once a searing political commentary, a screwball comedy, a suspense thriller and a poignant father-daughter love story. Like “Anora,” the most recent winner of the Best Picture Oscar, it takes sharp, daring tonal swerves without ever veering off track, but it’s as expansive as “Anora” is intimate, its hefty budget pressed into the service of several intricately choreographed, dazzlingly shot sequences. What a generous movie, packed with pleasures. What a great time.

• The newsletter recently went on hiatus for two weeks because I joined my Times colleague Bret Stephens for the Times Opinion feature The Conversation. Bret and I have had three of these online chats so far; this was the most recent one, preceded by this and this. We’ll most likely be back with more later this month.

• On Oct. 21 at Duke University, at the invitation of the Duke Disability Inclusion group, I’ll be discussing my 2022 memoir, “The Beauty of Dusk,” about my diminished eyesight after a rare stroke. You can find more details about the 11 a.m. event — which is free, open to the public and can be attended by Zoom — here.

• On Nov. 10 at Duke University, as part of my “Independent Thinkers” series of conversations, I’ll interview Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat with an increasingly big profile in his party. You can find more details about the 6 p.m. event, which is also free and open to the public but has no Zoom option, and register for it here.

On a Personal (By Which I Mean Regan) Note

I get philosophical about Regan’s aging. I suppose that’s my way of managing my anxiety about where it inevitably leads.

I tell myself that she and I are moving — or, rather, shuffling — in tandem, our weaknesses paradoxically forging a stronger bond. I tell myself that she’s acting, in an aptly doggy way, as my scout, my sentry, previewing for me the adjustments that growing older calls for, the patience it demands.

She’s closer now to 12 than to 11. For a 55-pound mix of Australian shepherd and Siberian husky, that’s getting up there. She has twice in the past year suffered serious leg injuries, twice had surgery, twice endured exacting recovery regimens of just so many minutes of walking this week and just so many more the next. She has shown remarkable resilience: On days when the mercury dips below 60 degrees, she can happily manage woodland hikes of three or so miles.

But a year ago it was five or even six. And she’d sprint this way and that, chasing a squirrel, chasing a phantom. That speed is gone. She paces herself.

When she walks upstairs at night for bedtime, she goes slowly, carefully, insisting that I be right behind her, one of my hands on her rear, a human guardrail against slippage. Downstairs, I’ve added several small rugs and carpet runners that have nothing to do with décor and everything to do with canine traction. Wood floors and old dogs don’t mix.

I look for signs that Regan is saddened or frustrated by all of this. I see none. Maybe that’s a function of my imperfect vision. Or maybe it reflects her perfect grace.