Price status quo. Alexander Genis-about how American elections looked from New York

1.

Elections, of course, are a holiday of democracy, but they pass everyday life. The sacred Tuesday is not even a day off. Yes, and he appeared because farmers had to get to the polling station all day, and Sunday, when other countries hold the elections, the Americans held in the church. Now, perhaps from work, they let go for two hours, and that's all. Neither balls, nor ribbons, nor music, not to mention the pies, which, they say, the Soviet power pam Unit.

On our side of the Hudson, voting is always, but not this time, takes place in the cramped and stuffy hall of the old city hall. Portraits of the fathers of the city from the day of foundation hang on the walls. For a hundred years, they grew up more than him. Solid bearded men with strict eyes, they look at us sternly, like from the pages of a textbook. But the guards of democracy are smiling. All pensioners, they rejoice at every voter, especially a beginner. These are welcomed as adherents of the cult of the republic: the shift has come.

The cordiality does not cancel, but exaggerates the severity of the procedure. It is exaggerated carefully by pensioners looking for me in their folios, compare the signature, check the documents - despite the fact that we live in the neighborhood and a quarter century we greet every morning. Ritual dances around the voter quickly end. You are escorted to a shabby electoral machine, twist the curtain, leaving alone to celebrate democratic service. Since I know in advance who to vote for, everything ends quickly and painlessly.

However, there are, other, more emotional elections, like those when we first voted for Obama. There was nothing strange in this: our town has long adjacent to the democrats. But that time, the presidents elected a black candidate, and everyone was a little proud of the breadth and impartiality of their views. We even patted each other, involuntarily revealing the secret of voting.

It really was a significant line in which I still see an enviable example of racial color blindness: there are no black and white presidents, there are only worthy and not very. By the way, this also applies to culture, and I refuse to recognize someone's right to interest rate. Obama did not guess anything special, but he came out sideways to me. Upon learning who I voted for, many of my readers stopped being.

Hurricane Sandy, who left our city without electricity, intervened in other memorable elections. We voted where spare generators worked: in the fire department. I even liked it. On the walls hung posters with beauties and bodybuilders, the bar was shoved in the corners, and fire trucks washed to the shine were driven into the courtyard, where I admired them from the old memory (I served two years in a fire).

In the current elections, everything was different because about a hundred million voted in advance or by mail.

The rest deliberately, despite the risk of getting an infection with Covid, preferred - where in the rain, where in the heat, and where in the frost - stand in line. And I understand why.

2.

The art of queue America is little familiar. Even the unemployed are waiting for free rations, sitting in cars.

Such a queue is strikingly different from our queues, which were not only flour, but also a sign of spiritual thirst for two generations. Parents gave us the experience of hunting for signature publications of the classics, behind which they, and then we stood at night. I still have a Gogol seven -volume, which cost me a sleepless and cheerful night. This peculiar intellectual Ramadan justified the love of enlightenment - books from this became closer and more expensive. In addition, in the night lines, customers found friends and lovers among the ascetics.

In America, before that Tuesday, of course, I have not seen anything like this. The queues here are found where the authorities are inhalation - whether it is the issuance of a driver’s license or unemployment benefits. Yesterday, however, people, sometimes standing for four hours to give their vote, did not grumble. On the contrary, an aura imagined around the line, as newspapers wrote before, “deep internal satisfaction”. Everyone knew that in our regions always choosing the Democrats, their voice would not change anything, but everyone felt that this test would change their own fate.

The rite of elections included an atoning sacrifice that could soften the gods of democracy and return the meaning and truth to the White House.

Perhaps that is why voters, standing at a two -meter distance, were dancing from time to time. I have not seen this in America for 40 years.

On the other hand, the sides, the sides, the expensive shops punched the windows with plywood, fearing that no matter what the elections end, there are those who consider the outcome with a good reason for pogroms. So far, fortunately, there was a day, and the election day has passed without serious incidents.

3.

For many, the treasured Tuesday began long before dawn, when the first lines to the polling stations lined up. After waiting for the morning crowd, which was in a hurry to vote along the way to the service, I entered the huge sports hall, where this year imposingly, in order to observe a safe distance, there were electoral vehicles and observers. They, in masks and gloves, demanded that we sign with the handles brought with us. Having completed the solemn, but to the offensive fleeting procedure, I started the main thing - waiting.

The election day resembles the New Year's Eve. Everything is ready: the tree is decorated, the salad is cut, champagne in the refrigerator. But the night is still far away, and the day stretches - aimless, not important, endless. Unable to do either labor or leisure, you are waiting for the evening, when the main thing begins with the closure of the sites: the counting of the votes.

Of all the rituals of the elections, this is the most dangerous. Cardiologists know that on this night the number of heart attacks grows by 60%.

On TV screens, numbers flash that give victory to one or the other candidate. News as a contrast shower: either chill, then scald the viewer. And worst that this is still not the end.

The classic newspaper stamp says: "The next morning we woke up in another country." The trouble is that today we woke up in the same. The elections have not changed the status quo. Whatever they end, America is still divided into two parts. How much more is the other - now the accounting commissions are deciding, faced with an unprecedented influx of ballots by mail.

A simple democracy is the reverse side of its success: unprecedented, in any case, over the past hundred years, the appearance of voters. Usually in America they vote from one to two -thirds that have the right. One laziness, others do not believe any government, others - they are most - hate candidates.

“The plague is for both of your homes,” they say, and then they are surprised that the plague is already here.

But this year there are much less indifferent than always.

Over the past four years, every day, in essence, has been a referendum to solve one question: who is Trump and what to do with it?

Everyone answers him by their faith, but now one thing is undeniable. Trump is certainly a charismatic person, if impeachment, 279 days of golf, a quarter of a million deceased from the virus and 20,000 false, false and wrong statements did not prevent him from casting votes that are now hysterically considering.

When I write these lines, no one (except, of course, Trump, who in advance and lawlessly declared victory) knows the name of the president. But one way or another, we have to live the next four years in two America, each of which cannot stand the other. You can reconcile with this only when we learn not to put politics by the threshold of the living room, dining room, and bedrooms. Recently, I gladly learned that every tenth marriage in America is a diverse.

How, one wonders, they get along?

Young people say statistics, in any way, but experienced - to take out a policy for brackets of love, patience and habits.

New York