jeremiad

noun

1. A long speech or prose work that bitterly laments the state of society and its morals, and often contains a prophecy of its coming downfall.

   “Near-synonyms: diatribe, tirade, lamentation, lament, litany; see also Thesaurus:diatribe”

   “"Father Maguire," he said in the broadest of Cork brogues, without the ghost of a smile on his grave Irish face, "is it a song yez wantin'? Well, thin, it's just a jeremiad I 'd be singin' yez, an' not another song at all, at all."”

   “According to the ‘business as usual’ school of modern historians, the millennial preoccupations of Glaber and Wulfstan hold no more significance than the jeremiads of the gullible and doom-laden who agonise in every society - the medieval equivalents of believers in UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, and the X files.”

   ““This is precisely the manner of Balkanization that Schlesinger cautioned us about in his prescient jeremiad on multiculturalism, The Disuniting of America.””

   “Cannes is smacking its lips in anticipation of filmmaker and provocateur Michael Moore's latest jeremiad against the US administration, which receives its premiere at the film festival today.”