The next great novel

Is it a Dickens novel we're living in? The Washington Post reports that every year, 1.6 million mentally ill Americans are housed in jails because there aren't enough hospital beds, group homes or shelters to accommodated them.\nAnd in spite of this bleak situation, the plight of homelessness and of the mentally ill shows up as a discreet blip on the radar just as often as Tipper Gore's husband is running for office. Even then, it was only long enough for Mrs. Gore to drag a journalist to one of Washington's parks, where she introduced him to some of the familiar faces sleeping on the sidewalks. \nOr is a piece of fiction by George Orwell, who penned 1984? It seems very likely, since President George W. Bush has already authorized the use of secret military tribunals for suspected terrorists. And not only the ones we capture in Afghanistan, but also the suspects living in the United States.\nTraditionally, even illegal aliens have been guaranteed Constitutional protections. Oh well.\nAnd not only are these secret tribunals a break with Constitutional standards; they are also going to be held at sea or on U.S. installations like Guantnamo Bay, Cuba. \nAccording to The New York Times, the release of information from these courtrooms "might be limited to the barest facts, like the defendant's name and sentence. Transcripts of the proceedings. . . could be kept from public view for years, perhaps decades." Objective monitoring of the tribunals will be impossible. So, if there are violations of justice, no one will know about them for a long time. \nAnother echo from Orwell's classic of manipulative totalitarianism is the changing face of America's enemy. In a scene from 1984, our hero Winston watches his fellow Oceanians tear down anti-Eurasian banners. In a classic act of doublethink, his country is, and has always been, at war with Eastasia. Winston watches the change: "The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform. . . Nothing altered in (the speaker's) voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia." \nOf course, nothing like that has happened in the war with. . . wait a minute, who are we fighting? At first, I thought it was "the evil one," Osama bin Laden. And then it was the al Qaeda network. Of course, we had to go to war against the Taliban, who were protecting al Qaeda. And now we almost have Afghanistan under our control (or at least, under the control of the northern alliance). \nOf course, we have all of Afghanistan except for the rural pockets of Taliban resistance. And the Pushtun Afghans, who aren't fond of the Taliban, but nonetheless aren't about to be lorded over by the Northern Alliance. But anyway, we have Afghanistan. \nOsama who? Never mind. In The New York Times, conservative columnist William Safire is already moving on to Iraq.\nOr should this all be coming out of a Ray Bradbury revision of Fahrenheit 451? In which American middle class utopia means putting Sept. 11 behind us so we can get on with the important business of ignoring international events and domestic crises. In which the loss of civil liberties, the abuse of presidential authority, and human suffering here and abroad is met with a collective shoulder shrug. \nOr maybe it is Dickens after all. Who cares if it's the worst of times for someone else? As long as it's the best of times for me.