Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News Editorials & Other Articles General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

AZJonnie

(3,664 posts)
4. I didn't recall was that Psalm said or the history so I asked Claude why it would not do so
Wed Mar 11, 2026, 03:00 AM
Wednesday
What Psalm 109:8 says
The verse reads: "Let his days be few; and let another take his office."

Taken alone, it sounds like a mild political wish. But the context is the problem. The very next verses (109 –10) read: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg." The full psalm is a sweeping curse calling for someone's death, their family's destruction, and their memory being erased from the earth.

Why it's a known political dog whistle
This verse has a specific documented history as a political weapon:

It went viral as an "Obama prayer" starting in 2009, appearing on bumper stickers and merchandise; critics immediately noted that the verse appearing benign ("let another take his office" ) was inseparable from its surrounding death-wish context.

Georgia GOP Senator David Perdue used it at the Faith & Freedom Coalition in 2016 as a "prayer for Obama," causing a media firestorm.

Since 2025 it has re-emerged in anti-Trump memes using the exact same framing.


Why an AI would decline
The refusal isn't about the Bible or Trump specifically. The issue is that Psalm 109:8 has a well-documented history as a coded call for a sitting president's death, exploiting the surrounding death-curse context while maintaining plausible deniability via the single innocuous-sounding verse. Creating a meme explicitly deploying that against the current president—regardless of who it is—crosses into content that any responsible AI should decline, because the whole point of the meme format is to leverage that coded threat


Sounds, I dunno, vaguely socially responsible, as long as it would also refuse to do so for other POTUS's as well, which I'd imagine it probably would

Recommendations

0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):

Latest Discussions»Latest Breaking News»U.S. Forces Attack Irania...»Reply #4