Regardless of whether you (my readers) support President-elect Barack Obama’s ideas and goals, I suspect you all understand their significance.

You see, my generation never had a Jack Kennedy. We barely had a Ronald Reagan. By the time we came of age, Bill Clinton’s philandering was old news, and any respect for the office of President ceased to exist when journalists started vying for book deals. As for patriotism, we were too young to appreciate the nationalistic effects of the Cold War. Sure, we’ve got textbooks, archived footage and even the Rocky movies to show us how things used to be–for better or worse–but it’s not the same. Even the American solidarity we saw following the September 2001 terrorist attacks quickly faltered as we focused our hatred onto the Middle East, almost as if the entire region swarmed with enemy combatants.

Growing up in the early ’90s, bands like Nirvana told us to be apathetic. As the decade continued, television and films said that we should be sarcastic and condescending toward anyone with a positive outlook on life. The naught years told us to be excessive–to party hard, revive the yuppie spirit, and to first and foremost look out for ourselves.

I didn’t buy into it, and neither did my friends. And now it seems the tides might turn in our favor. “Hope” is no longer an idea that inspires childish snickering. People seem to have regained their optimism.

Perhaps it’s a pipe dream, but maybe tomorrow will mark the day when Americans started looking out for each other again. It’ll be a long road… but do you think we can do it?

The artist Will I Am created the above video and song from Barack Obama’s speech at the New Hampshire primary. You can watch the speech here. If you’d rather read the entire transcript, click here.