The Academy Award winning 1965 film "Dr. Zhivago" contains a poignant scene that forms a fearful premonition in 2011. In that scene arrogant, wealthy Russians dine in an expensive upstairs Moscow restaurant mocking the poor protesters on the street below. If that scene of unrest is transferred to today's Wall Street, its portent becomes ominous.

On Wall Street cameras have recently caught that same mockery and arrogance in response to the current "Occupy Wall Street" movement. Posters proudly displayed from penthouse windows proclaiming "I am the One Percent" might not be so funny in the months to come if things keep going in the direction they are presently headed.

Sure, some of the protesters are flakes and their gripes seem not to have a particular focus, but their frustrations are anything but flaky and the flippant way they have been treated by the supposed "liberal" media has done little to stop the movement from growing. Now, labor unions have joined in the protests, and in the financial districts of cities far from Wall Street middle class Americans are carrying signs and picketing banks and corporate headquarters. And suddenly the stirring on the streets is being taken more seriously and the mockery seems to have waned as the protesters appear more menacing to the champagne sippers on the balconies above them.

Why the "one percent" should be surprised remains a mystery. Have they been so involved in the luxurious present that they've blinded themselves to the lessons of the past? Are they just now beginning to realize that a gilded cage is no protection from an angry mob? Are they so enthralled with their own opulence that they have failed to see how jobless and homeless people might view them with anger rather than with admiration?

It would serve the candidates of both major political parties well to heed the street rumblings from the common man instead of listening, as they have been for decades, to the tinkling coins and tempting offerings of corporate America. The middle class has had enough, and the hope that Barack Obama offered American workers in the last election has morphed into a national frustration over bank and corporate bailouts while no one appears willing to bail out the other 99 percent.

The public is now rightfully upset that somehow the very word "public" is being used as a form of derision by those who would like to privatize America. And when the U.S. Supreme Court decided to recognize corporations as individuals it was like rubbing salt into an already irritated collective wound, and the continued pampering of businesses considered "too big to fail" while politicians continued to condone a nationwide attack on unions could only go on for so long before the eyes of the common man opened to the truth: class warfare has been happening ever since the idea of trickle-down economics gained traction. The election of Obama was a weak recognition by the nation that hope and change were needed, but things haven't changed much and the unregulated powers that were are the powers that still are.

When the first stimulus Obama tried was being debated and diluted, a popular idea floated around the Internet that if each taxpaying citizen received an equal chunk of the billions in corporate welfare being given to the private sector by the public, then a true stimulus would occur as a sort of "trickle-up" economic policy. But that idea was mocked almost as heartily by the "one percent" as the current OWS movement has been mocked, and in hindsight it appears that the joke was on us.

When Obama followed George Bush's lead and offered another big bailout, middle class eyes should have opened. And if they had opened they would have seen a system in which corporate lobbyists and politicians have been over-friendly for a long time. They would have seen a system in which individuals and small businesses unable to afford lobbyists were being ignored in favor of the more lucrative big businesses capable of providing funds when re-election time arrives. And they might have even seen a system that did more than ignore them, that made pariahs of the unions those workers had formed to offset the power of the corporations. And the long list of ills and abuses of which unions are guilty - yes, they deserve a good deal of the criticism they receive - were used as ammunition to destroy or weaken unions while big companies spent big bucks to hide their own abuses and continued to abandon our borders for cheap labor elsewhere. All of which should have been an eye-opener to the middle class.

But for too long middle class satisfaction - with a lounge chair, a remote, and a flat-screen TV - lulled us into a comfortable apathy that did not allow a clear vision of the battle at hand. Now that the lounge chair has worn out and the remote is broken and the credit card won't easily purchase a new TV, the sleeping middle class giant is up and pacing, and the streets are beginning to shake with each step.

Anyone who has seen "Dr. Zhivago" knows what happens next if the giant continues to be mocked or ignored.

Mike Ruskovich is a Blanchard resident.