There's probably lot of truth in that observation. Our problem is that analyzing past events is relatively easy in hindsight but an objective assessment of the current situation is next to impossible.

Maybe the closest historical parallel to what we're facing these days is the collapse of the Roman empire. The word 'collapse' (just like revolution) generally implies something sudden but in human history, there have been very few truly sudden changes. For instance, the Roman empire was in many ways a global society from the contemporary perspective. But its decline lasted no less than at least a couple of centuries (depends on how you define its decline). And for nearly another 1500 years, the Roman empire lived on in some form, nominally at least, because old, proven ideas die hard.

What's really interesting is that the decline of the Roman empire has a lot in common with the current situation in the Western world: declining ideals, demographic crisis, old insitutions that no longer work like they used to, failing economy and an influx of foreign immigrants (not wanted by many but simply inavoidable), which will invariably change our society.

If you look at modern history, you could say the US reached its peak as a superpower by the end of WWII. Then there was the fiasco in Vietnam and the oil crisis (not sure we learned anything from that lesson), another brief but perhaps deceptive peak at the end of the Cold War and now another fiasco in Iraq plus an economic crisis of gigantic proportions. Perhaps the biggest difference is that with today's technology, fast travel and communication possibilities everything will happen much faster than before and on a much larger scale. But the basic mechanisms probably remains the same. So like Benjammin said, change really is inevitable. It's just a matter of how we can adapt to the new reality.