I would love for Kirk’s image to be rehabilitated. Way too many people who have never interacted with TOS directly basing everything they know about Kirk off Futurama’s Zap Brannigan and other parodies or the depiction in the Abrams movies. Any take with more nuance is welcome.

I agree with this. It’s already in canon in TOS that a constitution class could destroy a planet it stands to reason later Starfleet designs are just as capable. Using shipboard phasers and torpedos instead of a relativistic mass allows the crew to fine tune the amount of damage they want to inflict from glassing a whole continent down to surgically stunning a gang of Chicago mobsters.