Is it "always darkest before the dawn", or....?

I just read a powerful essay by SF Gate's Mark Morford which distills the horror and revulsion and wrongness of our invasion of Iraq, and explains that the real fight is not over who controls that country, but who controls the United States. It it is a fight for dominance between those who intend that the U.S. achieve world domination through armed conflict and those who believe our national goals can best be met through diplomatic negotiation. It is also much more.

Please read Morford's essay, "Iraq, deep in your bones", here.

Morford offers us hope that we are close to a new day in America, that the soul-sucking assault by the religious right, the unwinnable quagmire in Iraq, the war on the environment, and all the other evils assailing our sense of rightness that are now coming to a head, are the last gasps of a dying ideology, and that we will soon see a major shift in the policies and attitudes that now prevail.

Morford is in effect saying to us "Hold on, it's always darkest before the dawn", and I hope he's right. My God, I hope he's right, but there is within me a deep pessimism that wonders if the reality is that "it's always darkest before it goes pitch black".