Berlin is a safe city, by American standards. I’ve never felt particularly threatened here; even Kotbusser Tor, the corner/U-bahn station that until recently served as the city’s recognized open-air drug market, never felt anything like as threatening as walking in various streets in San Francisco late at night. Race violence is an issue in some neighborhoods, but even this is relatively minor.

What Berlin does is fires. Cars, for the most part, often as many as one a night. It’s a kind of sport for the left wing, what they call autonomous left groups. While not exactly supporting this, I’ve had a hard time feeling sorry for people who have had their Mercedes or BMWs burned in the middle of the night here. This isn’t a particularly supportable reaction — a childish one, even, and easy for me as I don’t depend on a car for a job, to drive a child to school, etc. — but people who have their Mercedes or Audis burned in a city that offers such excellent public transportation haven’t drawn any tears. There’s insurance, and it’s a message not to get too attached to things. (more…)

A road to Damascus moment for me with Twitter this morning. Obsessed with watching the protests and post-stolen-election ripples in Iran, I found my way to #IranElection, and realized how much more information, direct from people on the ground, was there.

It’s ongoing now, if slowing down. It’s modern, unfiltered news, which means rumors and speculation. But it is a way to be in the stream of events that CNN or a newspaper can never be (though the YouTube BBC video, filmed like a hidden camera because the authorities apparently arrested the reporters and took their earlier tapes, gives some sense for this.)

Despite what some Twitterers are proclaiming, this is not a substitute for mainstream media, even if some outlets are doing a terrible job. Apparently CNN in the US dropped the ball on this story badly, though overseas seems good, and I’m still reading the NYT, BBC and the Guardian. However, this real-time info scratches any itch that cable news ever did. Fast information, and the sense for what it’s like on the ground, to *live* an event instead of read about it, is coming from Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube today.

Here’s a list of twitterers worth following, when the #IranELection flow gets to be too much: http://tr.im/or5k.

This Flickr set is unmissable, though the photos on blogs and other sets are outstanding too.

All is most definitely not right with the world. But some things have been turned right-side-up again, for the first time in a long while.

Maybe the single serious bleak spot on Tuesday’s brilliant electoral map was the success of Prop. 8 in California, amending the state’s constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage. Funded by millions of dollars from the conservative Christians who nearly took over state politics in the early 1990s, by deep Mormon pockets, and with a fear-driven campaign that made McCain/Palin look like smiling purveyors of happy pills, the initiative drew a surprising 52 percent support despite the huge Obama turnout.

Gag.

What this means is that thousands of couples who have married in the last few months now face the prospect of the state revoking that status. Hundreds of thousands more lose the right. A jarring reality, given the sense of new dawn elsewhere in the country.

But a friend and fellow writer, Paul Festa (whose marriage is one of those now truly at risk) writes persuasively in The Daily Beast that opponents of Prop. 8 see some silver lining in the numbers — 52 percent support for this proposition, compared to 61 percent support for a same-sex marriage ban in 2000.

If you really want to know who will decide this issue if it comes up in 2012, ask 14-to-17 year olds, who will be voting in their first presidential election. Those straight supremacists playing with Mormon campaign contributions? Culture war dead-enders. Last night the gay movement lost a battle. The war, launched in the early 1950s by activists Harry Hay, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, we’re winning decisively.

Worth a read.

People can debate the semantics of landslides all they want. This is undeniably one of the great moments in American political history, and Obama one of its great figures.

It is encouraging, even inspiring, that an American political system showing such tattered edges over recent cycles can lead to this. A majority of the country has repudiated Bush and the party that spawned him. The tragedy is that we’ll be living under Bush’s shadow for years to come.

Already the conservatives are debating strategies for opposition. That’s natural. I would love to see the spirit of McCain’s gracious concession speech inspire Washington for at least a few months, but more likely is that aside from McCain himself, the minority party will leave the hard choices entirely to the new majority, and let the Democrats take the blame for the sacrifices that will be need to be made.

But that’s later. Today’s for dancing.