Anyone who follows my posts here at dailykos may know of my interest in theology. I am taking a course in Prophetic and Wisdom Literature this semester at a local Catholic graduate school. We currently are reading Amos and Hosea, and the professor asked us to write a prophetic announcement of judgment in which we condemn a contemporary evil. I modeled my judgment on Amos 6:1-14 and developed certain themes based on current events as well as literary themes in Amos. I thought I would fly it by my fellow Kosmopolitans for their probing critiques.
Woe to the arrogant in America, to the swaggering on the plains of Texas, masters of the land of purple mountains and waving grain, upon whom a smug people relies!
Go to Hiroshima and see, from there to Dresden the great, and down to Nanking of the Chinese! Are you more cultured than these peoples, or are your ambitions loftier than theirs?
You borrow against the day of hunger, yet you rain your bombs on children!
Seated upon chairs of mahogany, fat bellies pressed against the linen of tables that groan with excess, they pour the hot fat of lambs on their potatoes and stuff themselves with prime rib from the buffet.
With their Bibles clasped to their breasts, they chuckle under their breath as limousines carry them to their accountants.
They drink martinis from Waterford and rely on the patronage of plastic surgeons, yet they feign to not hear the plea of a dozen million growling stomachs.
Therefore, their ample coffers shall fill up with privation, and the candelabra of their glistening soirees shall become the vagrant's night lit by naught save the stars that like sparks of fire devour them.
The Giver of all Gifts testifies under an oath he swears by himself, say I, the just Judge: I loathe the insolence of Uncle Sam and deplore his missiles, and I impeach his reputation in a trial before his peers.
The strength of a dozen savage men will reach out to grasp at a morsel of bread.
But no longer will they clutch at anything. Their greed for control, their gluttony for comfort, their reserves for survival shall all desert them. They shall wander in desolate fields turning pebbles to batten on rotted wheat. They shall look at their great mountains and cry, "Fall upon us and bury our children."
God indeed stays his hand from their protection as their wealth and power crash into piles of debris. The greatest of all republics doubts the force of its own voice when it appoints its chief.
Can a human hand intercept a storm of dust? Or can the nucleus of an atom be put together once it splits? Yet you have turned amber fields into ravaged wastelands, and stripped the high places of their myriad treasures.
You rejoice over Grenada and Panama, and say, "Have we not, by our own strength, seized for ourselves Babylon?"
Be on your guard for I am raising up against you, nephews and nieces of your doddering uncle, say I, the One who alone watches over you, a blight that shall be your scourge from sea to shining sea.