I finally read Little Dorrit, and I found it surprisingly resonant. The wheel of Fate spins violently for many of the characters; I could practically hear the 100-voice choir singing O Fortuna.

As always, confidently asserts a person who hasn’t read a Dickens book in decades, Dickens portrays 19th century Britain as a hugely inequitable society, one without institutional sympathy, and driven by greed. That is, in striking contrast to the UK today, while quite similar to the US. The title character, a person of infinite self-sacrifice, always forgiving, kind, and helpful, with no interest in worldly possessions, has no modern equivalent to my knowledge. Dickens explicitly paints her as a follower of Jesus, and contrasts her with another character who is cruel, controlling, and deceptive, yet considers herself very religious.

People claiming Christian moral superiority while doing unchristian things are rife today. So are people who commit crimes without compunction, as does a murderer/extorter in this book. He presages the narcissism of California Representative Duncan Hunter, who called his indictment for using $250,000 of campaign funds for personal pleasure then writing it off as charitable giving a witch hunt.

Witches are getting almost as much bad press as Nazis lately.

Then there’s the Bernie Madoff subplot, in which the character Mr. Merdle does for 19th-century investors exactly what Madoff did for 21st-century investors, though the fictional version has the grace to commit suicide instead of being turned in. Both cases have identical legions of investors rich and less so who marvel at their remarkable gains without asking any questions, such as, Why is his name so similar to the French word merde?

Dickens hates bureaucracy almost as much as Kafka does–I think I’ve read Kafka slightly more recently–and introduces the Circumlocution Office, employer of many shallow-end-of-the-gene-pool nobles and their hangers-on, with its expertise in how not to do it. Occasionally challenged by Parliament, its employees justify their existence by pointing to the staggering number of forms that have been filled out by petitioners trying to do something. Many US citizens view our government just so.

Poor people who become sick or injured in Dickens’ Britain do not fare well, another harbinger of USA 2018. As of September 1, I will be covered by Obamacare, characterized by the current Administration as a popular welfare program, the use of which may soon be an excuse to expel millions of legal immigrants.  I’m not sure about those immigrants, but there is no welfare aspect to ACA for me; it costs more and covers less than the employer health insurance I am losing. For the moment, it covers preventative care sans copay, and cannot exclude for pre-existing conditions, though aforementioned Administration is working hard to eliminate those requirements, from both ACA and employer-sponsored health insurance.

Is my life Dickensian? Hardly. But there are strengthening whiffs of it.