Amid revelry, rifts of four years show

A late-morning stillness had settled over a November Saturday in a cozy blanket of suburban serenity. Suddenly, at stadium-level blast, there came the shattering rock ’n’ roll roar of victory:

The sounds of something unleashed — banging pots, honking horns, primal shouts — burst from all directions in Maplewood, New Jersey. And as another Queen song boomed from the muscular loudspeakers in his garage, Zack Kurland stood at the edge of his driveway, arms raised like Rocky.

His wife, Neena Kumar, came running and leapt into his arms. News had just arrived that Joseph R. Biden Jr had been declared the winner of the presidential election of 2020, and now the two were twirling in an impromptu public dance of triumph.

The moment evoked an iconic American image: a World War II sailor spontaneously kissing a woman in a nurse’s uniform in Times Square after the news of victory in Europe. Only instead of V-E Day, this was V-B Day: Victory for Biden.

But not everyone was dancing. Triumph in a foreign war unifies a country; triumph in an election has the lurking potential to further divide. And by Sunday morning, some of the celebration and grieving had melted away to expose a difficult question for divided families and a divided nation: Now what?

True, a record number of more than 75 million Americans had voted for Biden, the Democratic challenger, and his running mate, Kamala Harris, the first woman elected as Vice-President. Also true was that more than 71 million others now had to grapple with the concept that their candidate — Donald J. Trump, the Republican incumbent — would most likely be branded by his own worst epithet: loser. By refusing, for now, to publicly accept the election results, Trump was all but inviting dance-interrupting discord. And some accepted his invitation.