The Aaron Coleman fiasco is a pretty great demonstration of how the whole Dirtbag Left thing is itself incredibly shallow affective identity politics, even as they claim to hate identity politics

The people who had his back were on his side *because* he was an Internet troll

He was an awful, horrible candidate in every respect but the people flocking to his side thought a lot of the ways he was horrible were "based" and made up for the other ways he was horrible ("He's abusive to women but he's also abusive to Establishment Dems!")

Like if he were exactly the same person but actually *better at politics* in the traditional sense - if he "came off as a hypocrite" because he was actually nice in public - he'd have no allies at all

Just being consistently mindlessly a prick to everyone at all times was a *successful media strategy* for this kid

Because there's this whole contingent of columnists and podcasters who use the same strategy themselves, defining fakeness and hypocrisy as the worst thing

It's very, very, very Trumpian

It's exactly what people mean when they try to juggle this paradox of how Trump is "the most honest man in Washington" when he lies to their faces constantly (because he lies badly and perfunctorily)