If you want to keep something, sometimes you have to fight for it. Fighting brings out the best in no one, but it often enables less grief in the world than a loss to someone much worse ethically would entail.
There is ZERO question in my mind that had we chosen to win the Vietnam War by helping the South in the very last stages, that at least 2 million people would either not have been murdered in the most brutal way possible, or psychologically tortured in purpose-built gulags.
You don’t get the luxury of insulating yourself from unpleasant realities. You can lie to yourself for now, certainly, but when you die, when you see what you did with your life, you cannot escape responsibility in my view. I literally think that when old hippies die, they will see what happened in Vietnam after the sadists took over. They will see what happened in Cambodia because we abandoned them in the face of a determined but manageable enemy.
And it won’t be pleasant.
To the point here, I see no contradictions inherent in me being a dick sometimes. Most of the time, it is true that I am being emotionally inflexible and unskilled. I grant this. But sometimes I need to be this way. When I have reached a much more acceptable level of skill, my reactions will generally be those best suited to the task at hand.
The concept that you should be nice to everyone all the time, though, is one of Sybaritic leftism. It is not one best suited to improving this world, in my considered view.