THE YELLOW BADGE OF CANADIAN COURAGE.

We now know how Justin Trudeau would vote on the second impeachment of Donald Trump — his “repeachment,” as the Post headline put it last week. Like a cable news commentator, the prime minister told us flat-out: “What we witnessed was an assault on democracy by violent rioters incited by the current president and other politicians.” Guilty as charged, Madame Speaker.

Compare that with his artful 21-second silence last June when asked about Trump's call for the use of military force against Black Lives Matter protesters across the United States. After the first few of these 21 seconds, as news reports put it, “Trudeau opened his mouth slightly, but did not speak.” Sound did eventually issue forth, not to answer the question directly (“It is a time to pull people together…”), but to argue that this country is not immune to racism — which is certainly true but was not the question asked.

The 21 seconds were widely interpreted as a sly, passive-aggressive way of denouncing Trump without actually speaking words that might inflame a bully still in full possession of his presidential powers. Not that Trump wouldn't have got the message with or without words. When Trudeau and other national leaders were caught on tape discussing him at a NATO meeting in London in 2019 Trump said Trudeau was “two-faced,” which in that instance he certainly was. In 2018, after the G7 meeting in Quebec, Trump had used the terms “dishonest and weak” to characterize Trudeau after the prime minister's resistance to U.S. tariffs was much tougher following the meeting than it had been during it when, according to Trump, he had “acted so meek and mild.” One thing about Trump: he catches his adversaries' vulnerabilities and is never shy about spelling them out.

What accounts for the difference between Trudeau's meaningful silence last summer and his forthright denunciation of Trump after the Capitol riot? No puzzle here: “Hi, ho, the witch is dead! The wicked witch is dead!” Trump is gone — almost: just one day left — and can't hurt us anymore. So it's now safe for those who so far have expressed their contempt for him in private or in code or gesture to rear back and shout it out.

Safe, but maybe not very admirable. A first thought was that it was “Dutch courage,” if traits may still be attributed to nationalities. But in the Spectator recently, British writer and critic Ferdie Rous explained that the term is not actually “an accusation of cowardice but admiration of booze-soaked

NO PROFILES IN COURAGE ARE INVOLVED IN SLAMMING

THE DEPARTING BULLY.

bravery.” In fact, 17th-century British soldiers so admired their Dutch adversaries' drinking of gin to “steel their nerves before battle” that they started doing it themselves. Those finally giving voice to anti-Trumpery in January 2021 may well be booze-soaked but they are not at all brave.

Perhaps the term “Canadian courage” might suit for this kicking of a bully only when he's permanently, finally down — as we all hope Trump is, even if he himself hopes for a return engagement in 2024. For some Americans now condemning the president — Republican Representative Liz Cheney, for instance, who voted for his impeachment — genuine courage still is involved. Trump's millions of supporters are likely to try to exact revenge during 2022's primary season and, in the current turmoil, the more unhinged among them may even contemplate physical harm to the 10 Republican Congressmen who voted for impeachment.

For Canadian politicians, however, no profiles in courage are involved in slamming the departing bully. What's in play instead are easy political points, since most Canadians shared the same opinion of Trump as most members of the U.S. “Resistance.” (We don't hear so much about “the Resistance” anymore but anyone concerned about unwillingness to accept election results should ponder that the first million-plus march against Trump — the Women's March — was held exactly one day after his inaugural. He got a 24-hour honeymoon.)

The responsibilities of office do sometimes require officials not to tell their whole truth. Ambrose Bierce called diplomacy “the patriotic art of lying for one's country.” That's a little strong. Sometimes the same effect can be had simply by not speaking one's full mind, which is what Justin Trudeau evidently did last summer.

But if in order to avoid possible retaliation against your country, you have been silent on important matters, it may be better, even after the restraints have been removed, to maintain your silence. You don't do yourself any favours by pointing out how craven you were when the object of your would-have-been-oh-so-very-tough remarks posed a credible threat against you. And at this stage you contribute little to the debate by joining the suddenly deafening chorus of those recently freed to speak.

The United States is a great democracy, older than our own, that is negotiating a perilous passage in its history. If it needs our advice and help, it will ask for them. If it does ask, we should happily provide them and, of course, we should all wish it and its new administration well. But our politicians have enough trouble seeing to our own problems to be offering up free advice, mainly for their own political benefit, on our neighbour's current difficulties.