The so called nice guy is most often merely an undeveloped man. And lack of development does not equal nice or moral. Along the lines of, just because someone isn’t bad doesn’t make them good. The absence of vice is not the presence of virtue.

For this reason if you have an asshole who does nonetheless have some virtues such as courage, he is a better man than the undeveloped man. The undeveloped man may cope by telling himself he’s just nice - when in reality this may not be the case.

That’s what I think is going on with this phenomenon