So you went to Yale.
while I never met anyone named Bush, please let me assure you that I met at least 200 or 300 would-be Bushes.
And there were about 5 times the number of would be Dean's and Hillary's at Yale. I am surmising that you are in that camp.
The notion of assumed and inherent superiority is utterly anathema to me, and that self-assumption on the part of quite a number of my former fellow undergraduates I thought both ridiculous and arrogant...and got into any number of brawls (real brawls, blood shed, and the lot) on this very point. However, my dear uncle, recently departed, had taught me a very valuable lesson as a boy: NEVER start a fight, and NEVER fail to finish one. And I didn't, and I didn't.
You may recall that, in March-May 1970, Bobby Seale (head of the Black Panther Party) was on trial for murder. That trial was held in the New Haven courthouse, exactly 2 blocks from where I lived. Well, this trial was ''unfair'', dontchaknow, ''racist'' and all that, and every leftie scumbag in the world descended on the campus on May Day weekend that year. The attitude all round was, shall we say, somewhat less than tolerant. There was supposed to be a ''student strike'' of classes, to show ''solidarity'' (or something) with (someone) -- the arguments made in favour of this were, at best, delusional.
I declined to ''strike''. On the Friday before the weekend orgy as planned, I was walking into a class I particularly liked, Demography 17b, with Lincoln Day (wonderful lecturer, btw), and one of the little radical types stood in front of the door to Linsley-Chittenden Hall. He presented all the arguments (well, all the 30-second sound bytes, at any rate) why I shouldn't attend class. I said, very mildly, ''Thanks. I disagree.'', and made to go into the building, by going around him. He made a mistake. He grabbed me.
He was extremely lucky. Two of my fraternity brothers were with me, and pulled me off the little bastard before I did anything more than put a few stitches in his face and kick him square in the crotch a couple of times. Upon leaving the class when it ended, I found that the little coward -- having started the problem -- had run off to the police and filed a charge. I was duly thereupon arrested, the only time in my life.
Here's a practical tip for you: if arrested, call your attorney IF he or she is the one that can do you the most practical good the quickest. In this case, an attorney was NOT the person to call. I called instead a lady named Hannah Grey, the CFO, essentially, of the College, described to her the circumstances, asked for her assistance, and mentioned -- very casually -- that I was majoring in mathematics and was able to construct numbers with an AMAZING amount of zeroes. Nothing threatening, mind, everything very calm and orderly.
The College had me bailed out in 34 minutes, by the clock. I lost a wager with the bail officer, a nice guy, that it would be at least one hour -- he had experience in these matters, I didn't, but the wager seemed reasonable at the time. We enjoyed a nice lunch with a couple of beverages (my treat, paying the loss) a couple of weeks later.
Never heard another word about it, ever. At the time, Yale College still had some scruples about property and private responsibility for one's behaviour. It no longer does, which is of course why I no longer (since 1992, btw) have had anything to do with that institution.
The radical amateur utopian socialists of that day were, as you correctly point out, far too numerous. I despised every one of them, bar one. And they knew it, too. They did their ''thing'', whatever the devil it was. I did mine.live and let live is fine with me, and I'll hold up my end of that bargain until you decide not to ''let live''. Look up the lyric to the last verse of ''Sixteen Tons'', if you'd care to know the dynamic of that mutual relationship.
L'Envoi: I only ever saw that little punk again once, 1 1/2 years later...but that's another saga for another day.