Spirit of the Times - Zeitgeist in German

[shellbyrne]

I'm interesting in doing a word association or random thoughts having to do with this topic - The Spirit of the Times.

I had forgotten all about this word until the election last year.   I was watching Obama at a rally on the news.  I am definitely not for Obama at all by the way, but as I was watching him speak and the crowd responding to him, I suddenly knew he was going to win.  The word popped in my head - Zeitgeist - the Spirit of the Times - a force of history we don't fully understand.  A poetically speaking, his star was on the rise.  It didn't matter if you could poke holes in his logic; the rhetoric was more important.

What do you associate with this word, what is an example?  I think it's fascinating phenomena.

(I don't intend for this to be about Obama per se, it was just my example.)