I wasn’t an asshole in high school.
I wasn't cruel or publicly mean to anyone either. I just did my work and played my sports and music and drama productions. The only real fights and active grudges were on the hockey rink.
The only boys going on offense outside of sports then were actually the poofs themselves--whom few of us recognized as such. This was late 1960s to early '70s.
I now recall a few who were lispy and effeminate who flaunted immoral, cynical attitudes and dressed with a flamboyant sloppiness--in a school where the boys wore jackets and ties. A lot of us just didn't want to face that kind of darkness and would just avoid conflict with it. This was the beginning of the culture's obvious collapse a few years later. Clearly, there wasn't enough moral leadership at the top. The pro-promiscuity and proto-gay cynics were taken seriously when they opined evil things against marriage, the military, religion, and America itself.
I knew it was bad, but we weren't religious, which would have made us more articulate and effective. Neither I nor anyone else bothered to oppose it actively enough. We dreaded their social power among the other students when we should have fought its cynical emptiness and everything that followed from it. We read about Marx and his corrosive effect in Europe, but only our parents realized we were swimming in it, and didn't know how to band against it. Too many of the other parents were either in the Communist Party or Lefty sympathizers.
As we now know, the political and moral rot were one.