That "thing" fulfilled its primary mission goal of clearing the tower. It was its first flight. Anything beyond that was bonus data for SpaceX engineers. And yet Starship even reached Max-q before it was destroyed.
Wasn't that long ago that the left didn't yet have the hate Elon brain bug and they still understood that rockets blowing up (Falcon 9 rockets at the time) are a necessary part of the iterative process that leads to improvement.
For example, in 2017, lefties absolutely loved this video that SpaceX itself posted, "How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster," which shows how failure after failure can eventually lead to success. I think that's a positive lesson for society.