Some of what you've said makes perfect sense.

However on the other hand it sounds like you are saying that DBAs have a license to be complete arseholes and that "collaboration means licking their boots and putting them on a pedestal.

Respect and cooperation cuts both ways.

I guess I've never met/conversed with any real DBAs such as you describe. Some of the people I've dealt with that have declared themselves as a DBA to me have clearly not been DBAs - I knew more than them and I am not a DBA I'm a developer.

Problem is the projects I work on I end up a doing development, DB schema design, writing SQL etc... there is typically never a DBA to help.

I imagine this is especially true when it comes to bespoke software products where your clients simply install it and host the DB, i.e. it's not an in-house thing. I find that in this scenario whenever there is a problem DBAs won't/don't get involved it's us that has to deal with everything (whether we want to or not).