To flip the political polarity, this is a matter of free speech, an issue championed by the right as of late- and involving Twitter, no less! It becomes an interesting case study once you strip away the triggering particulars and examine it from a bigger picture.
Person was fired for offending, in very harsh words, a CUSTOMER while being on behalf of a VENDOR. HN people in this thread see it as it is, without deflection attempt by OP (oh, this is DoD, this is government official, he is corrupt, he is racist, trump era, fuck you is not big deal etc etc etc).
Some people have strong feelings against Monsanto. Pfizer. Oil industry. Solar industry. Chemical industry. Meat processing industry. Would this be an excuse to write the things that this person did? No.
Imagine scenario. Instead of DoD there is a slide from a guy from Tyson. And some vegan activist, who represents VENDOR in professional capacity, literally writes the same tweets: "Fuck you", then "Blood on your hands". Will that be acceptable? Should that be ok?
To be honest, I thought the inflammatory tweet against Walmart was suspect enough, both because one would assume that if there's a VMWare business deal with a fellow corporation it would be more at risk than one with the federal government (or not: https://siliconangle.com/2015/03/17/u-s-military-drops-1-6b-...). One would think that would merit more potentially scrutiny and censure, because when it comes to the government there's an element of protected political speech (so long as it does not trigger any security concerns) that provides plausible deniability, as the OP is engaging there. So no, I don't think it's equivalent to Tyson, because the latter is more of a business risk.
> Will that be acceptable? Should that be ok?
A lot of the language being heralded as examples of brave free speech on social media are far from acceptable or okay either, but that’s where those fights take place- on the margins, at the boundaries of social tolerance.
