I think you have tremendously misunderstood my post if you think I was calling buying a USB sound card "political activism." I called it political expression. One of literally dozens, perhaps hundreds expressions I performed today. And those political activities, those actions within the context of my polity, reinforce my views on society (and ambivalence or a lack of give-a-shit is, too, a belief). Now, you are definitely, one hundred percent right that there are cases where there are no good answers and you have to do the best you can with what you have available! But Donald fucking Trump (or Palmer fucking Luckey) have no interests that relate to such things. You don't have to live in TrumpCo housing, you don't have to buy Trump Steaks, you don't have to watch The Apprentice (though that's probably dead now), and you don't have to buy an Oculus Rift. So the idea of castigating people for opting not to support people whose active practices are bad and wrong and should not be promulgated is absolutely bonkers-silly. I compromised when buying that USB sound card because I would, all things being equal, buy a device from a seller who used labor practices and manufacturing practices that I was 100% on-board with--but I couldn't source one in the time I needed and I have a budget, and I needed it for a project whose failure would be more harmful to people I know and interact with on an everyday basis than the marginal harms caused by the purchase. But I thought about it before I did it, and came to the conclusion that it was an acceptable expression of what I actually believe.

You express your political beliefs--and your religious beliefs, and your philosophical beliefs--not just by your vote, but by your actions. Every day. It never stops. You can never, ever, ever opt out. These beliefs are your character, and your character is who you are in the dark. Either you do them, or you don't believe them. There's no middle ground. You can't have beliefs and then not practice them (to the best of your ability, with natural accommodations for factors that prevent you from practicing them--like, this is why I emphatically don't cast Oculus employees in a poor light for being unfortunately attached to that company, because most people can't up and quit a job at a moment's notice).

If the idea that "the practice of your beliefs is the having of them" is extreme, then we should all off ourselves and let the cockroaches have their shot. But it's not extreme. It's just uncomfortable to have it pointed out that you might not be practicing what you preach.

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Moving on--I do think Facebook shoved Luckey in the basement for his political activity. They should. He makes the company look dirty. He makes people who work at Facebook feel less safe because he is making war on them (in the "politics is war by other means" sense of the word) for their ethnicity or their gender. I don't think that it's either incorrect nor pejorative to say that, if not for legal obligations, he probably would have been shitcanned immediately and it would have been for his political activity. And that's OK. When your politics are effectively existential threats towards people, "fuck you" is a pretty okay response. And that goes both ways. Bringing it back to a personal level: I destroy jobs because I'm a computer programmer and that's not a good thing for a lot of people. They can tell me to go fuck myself, they can choose not to interact with me. It's unlikely to have an impact, but they can. So it is up the chain, too.

"Free speech" comes with consequences. So it is, and so it must be, or "free speech" is one-way. (Which is really what most--not necessarily you, I'm not a mind reader, but most--people who advocate for tolerance towards conservative and, frankly, reactionary politics are really angling for: the freedom to do unto others.)