The Old Testament prophets condemned war and accumulating riches as attacks on society and the poor, as forms of idolatry and blindness where fellow persons are degraded into non-persons. False prophets are described as broken cisterns that can hold no water or clouds that carry no rain.
Prophets criticize spiritual and political corruption, the tendency of priests and the church to justify or gloss over the greed and megalomania of the elites.
Vietnam, Enron, Iraq, Afghanistan and state capture (the quiet coup of Wall Street and the banks) are turning points in America's loss of trust. Can we learn from the prophets to raise our voices and decry normalizing greed and militarism?
to read Dieter Potzel's essay "Elijah, Amos and Jeremiah: Prophets as Uncomfortable Critics," click on
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2011/02/406308.shtml