Little Rabbit Foo Foo

I began the week thinking about two versions of the children’s song “Little Rabbit Foo Foo” and ended up thinking about politics. 

 My granddaughter’s version:

Little Rabbit Foo Foo

Running through the forest

Scooping up the field mice

And bopping them on the head!

Unfortunately, bopping field mice is definitely not within the boundaries of the Good Fairy’s moral code and when Little Rabbit refuses to cease his “bopping” activities, she turns him into a Goon.

The version that my wife and I remember is rather different:

Little Rabbit Foo Foo

hopping through the forest

Scooping up the field mice

And bashing them on the head!

 George Lakoff is an American cognitive linguist who writes about  how language creates metaphorical moral frameworks that shape how we reason. Bopping is annoying. Bashing is murderous.  The difference in the two verbs is the wide chasm between two imagined worlds, two very different metaphors - in one there are annoying rabbits, in the other darker world there are murderous ones.  If I was a field mouse, I know which imagined world I would choose to live in: Could I have the one with the Bopping, please.

I’ve had the misfortune of listening to a lot of American politicians lately. One group seems to clearly live inside the metaphor: Government is Evil. Actually, in their metaphorical framework a lot of things are Evil. Evil is out there and it will bash you and so will Government, big or little, because Government is Evil.

The other group seems to occupy the metaphor: Government is Community. Within this framework Big Community and Little Community aren’t scary words. Even though there are a lot of boppers out there, if we work together we can solve a lot of problems.

 A couple of facts:

For millions of years, people have needed community to survive.  

Rabbits are herbivores; field mice aren’t on their diet.