I don’t think the text implies they are meant to represent our worse selves. If anything they are the elves’ worse qualities. And if that is the case, then the worst of the worst still have beliefs. Even about themselves.
To be a cynic or a loyalist involve belief (or lack of) in something.
My disappointment comes from not really knowing much of what true orcishness is. If we buy the meta narrative, then we only know of it from their enemies’ description. Which is less than favourable. Sure, this is likely because they are not a favourable people. Far from it. But if we buy into Tolkien's world, we have to buy that the stories we read are told by the victors. We get orcs through the filter of hobbits and Men. If a writer includes certain details, it's because they believe them to be important. If the Red Book of Westmarch includes certain traits of orcs over others, that is because only those were known to its authors and they were the details they felt saliant to tell for the reason of highlighting their enemies as bad.
I'm not saying orcs are misunderstood and are really the heroes, but there is language used to describe certain races, including orcs, (i.e. swarthiness and eye shape) that become recurring characteristics of what is negative. These attributes facilitate Othering. I firmly disagree with anybody who reads Tolkien's works as pro-racist or anything of the kind, but he has built a very firm world in which characters and cultures have ingrained worldviews. Tolkien may not be willfully Othering orcs based on physical attributes, but plainly his characters are capable of this. We see the worldview of a people most clearly with hobbits and their passions and pet-peeves. Paragraphs and attributed to the loves of hobbits. If we buy the frame, then we accept this is because the Red Book is largely hobbit-born then filtered through Men. If we can see their loves through what they chose to detail, then we also see what they count as ill. Physical descriptions included. Othering can come even from characters we like. It doesn't make them any less real, it makes them more. Sadly we only know one and not really the other.
I don’t want to project, I want to explore what we are given from the perspectives we are told to take them. And there are just gaps I wish were filled in. They may answer the problem of the orcs or make it worse. Alas, Tolkien never squared that circle