Eh... minor point of correction I'd make is it wasn't really reddit or twitter that would have got them into the alt-right. Thing you have to understand is that probably the most significant presence of the alt-right in the US is
talk radio, and the sort of demographics we're talking when we talk those workers still listen to the stuff often enough. Their world view gets informed a non-negligible amount by good ol' Limbaugh and his ilk, half-listened to as they go to work or come home or whathaveyou, and they have for most of either of our lives. Alt-right presence among these demographics ain't even remotely a new thing.
Now, talk radio and the internet alt-right is... incestuous, to say the least. Play off and feed into each other a lot, but there's been no stumbling upon the alt-right going on here, by and large. Ground level exposure wouldn't have changed
that much. They've been listening to it for years, or around folks that were. What the net stuff would have done... did to a fair degree. Was
further legitimize. You hear this radio stuff and it shapes your world view but maybe there's some doubt or at least restraint because that's mostly the only place you hear it
explicitly -- fox or whathaveyou dog whistles but rarely more, generally -- or among polite company but then you get into this election and suddenly you see this shit
everywhere, look online and see it everywhere, look at the news and see right and left wing media jabbering about shit that's propagated about as much from online crap as anything and was taking cues from what rush or whoever was jabbering about last week regardless. The effect was there in previous elections, the alt-right wasn't some kind of new or unusual thing, exactly. The sheer amount its talking points and narratives were embraced,
that is what was unusual. That's a large chunk of where the FTFE comes in. Suddenly crooked hillary and all the other shit isn't just a limbaugh thing, it's something CNN or some whatever the hell is babbling about corruption and scandals and rigging in relation to. That... changes things, y'know? It's not
everything but it's a hell of a lot.
Yeah, I've seen Trump lean more towards isolationism over globalism. The idea that he'd wage war left, right, and center unprovoked doesn't make sense.
He
did have feet on the ground in syria as one of his campaign... statements. I keep wanting to say promises because that's what you normally say about things politicians say on the campaign trail, but well. Trump. Also fairly notably thin skinned and historically spiteful, and has, if nothing else,
stated he wants to do a lot of things that would piss off a lot of other countries. If he goes through with trying to extort countries for protection money and then actually brings military in force into syria, it's not very difficult to see things going very south very quickly. Him getting into a lot of pissing contests with other countries, and then resorting to the biggest stick(s) he has (military, economic sanctions) is... not implausible. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than I'd like. Hell of a lot more sense than a lot of the
military would like. Or public, really -- most polling and whatnot regarding military reliability or whatev' were... not particularly enthusiastic. And we're still not sure how much his comments on nukes were trump being trump or trump being earnest.
Thing about trump is that he doesn't really lean towards
isolationism, though, save in an economic sense, and even then only in specific ways. It's protectionism -- he's been pretty clear he wants to fuck with the rest of the world fairly vigorously and at least portrays himself as wanting the US in a position of global power and influence (hamhanded as all hell influence, but influence). He's also someone that has difficulty backing down from a challenge of just about any sort. If other countries don't just bend over and think of england, it's hard to say how well he'll react. Now, congress et al, they'll probably/hopefully/maybe stop him, but that doesn't mean the powers given the CIC can't cause some hella' military snafus before they manage it.
Now all
that said? To stuff mentioned above, if he tried to institute a draft for shit like settling his own pissing contests, or anything that wasn't outright fending off a ground invasion, you might
actually see a civil war in our lifetime, or at least more than one attempt at a coup and/or civil unrest that makes all the shit that's happened the last few years look like a mildly rambunctious kegger party. American public is still pretty iffy on military flexing outside the country, and support for the draft outside of existential threats is... not high. To say the least. Try to force them into that and I'd give good odds it's going to get ugly so fast it gives analysts whiplash.
