Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle.
Most people would interpret 'the fiddle' as being a violin. However, the 'fiddle' in this case actually refers to the manipulation of politicians and legislative bodies, to write favourable rules for the rich and and powerful and for multinational corporations, who can ignore national boundaries. The cat stands for these entities and is a signifier for the craftiness and cunning of them.
'Hey diddle diddle' is on the face of it, little more than poetic nonsense which is dressed up like a case of echolalia to rhyme with the clause which follows. 'Diddle' is in fact a diminutive and because it is doubled, it means that this is in the plural. The use of the word 'hey' at the beginning of this is clearly meant to be attention grabbing because what is to follow is both urgent and important.
The cow jumped over the moon.
Obviously a cow jumping over the moon can only be within the realm of metaphor. While it is true that puissance is the high-jump component in the equestrian sport of show jumping, I know not of a bovine equivalent.
A cow is a sufficiently large enough beast to signify something which is massive and difficult to stop. Having established that the cat and the fiddle refers to multinational corporations, this line refers to the fact that they are not only able to jump across national borders and regulations but that they do so with relative ease.
The little dog laughed to see such fun.
A dog is an animal which through proper training, can be made to come to heel and conform to the will of their master. You would be correct in thinking that the loyalty and fealty of dogs can be established and extracted oh so easily, and it is to this end that this metaphor begins.
The fact that the dog is laughing at the 'fun' that it is witnessing, either means that the dog is a willing participant or that the dog is in fact too stupid to critically analyse what is going on. This is especially evident among sections of the electorate who have in the past decade or so, been made to conform their will and even their speech with the economic right, despite the fact that it runs counter to their own interests. By using the magic words of some assumed morality, or appeals to nationalism, racism, national security or nativism (even when the people doing the propagandising don't actually conform to the standard themselves), the 'little dog' (that is the electorate) has been convinced to not only vote for these people but actually cheerlead for them.
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
At the same time that the economic right has been stealing away the 'little dog'of the electorate with tissue paper promises, the economic left has more or less abandoned its previous base and thrown its lot in with a modern kind of cultural leftist and libertarian pluralism. Granted that liberal democracies have for the last century or so expanded people's rights and conditions, it was almost always the collectivist push of the economic left who did that; predominantly through the movement of the chartists, trade unionists, suffragettes. The last thirty years especially have seen movements like the push for LGBTQI rights but they have almost been in direct opposition to the economic left; and after having achieved what they set out to do, offer no kind of dialogue with the people whom they have othered. The dish and the spoon have engaged in an almost identical game to the cat and the cow.
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