"Flashes of anger"

Until now I'd avoided all the articles about Edward Snowden's biography and personal life etc., but the Post has a kind of round-up of it all that I just read.

There's this paragraph at the very end:

Snowden now presents himself as a reasoned protester, a conscientious objector of sorts, but he has also shown flashes of anger and even contempt for some aspects of American society. “Go back to your meaningless consumerist life,” he wrote four years ago in a comment on a YouTube video that poked fun at the ritual of high school reunions.

I know reporters are overworked, stressed-out, and under deadlines, but really. Isn't it possible to be both "reasoned" and show "flashes of anger" at "some aspects of American society"? Anyone who doesn't show occasional flashes of anger at some aspects of American society is probably catatonic.

On the other hand, in some of his online comments quoted in the piece Snowden sounds like an egotistical jerk. But some of those quoted remarks are from his early- or mid-twenties, when a lot of people sound like egotistical jerks.

The interesting biographical question is what the article refers to as his leap from security guard to security clearance, a transition whose details apparently remain murky.