Since Donald Trump announced his bid for presidency in June 2015, the world has watched in shock as his campaign has been a whirlwind blur of racial slurs, misogyny, bold claims and promotions of violence all swept under the banner of "Make America Great Again."

Trump is being demonized by the media as the monster tearing apart American society and as much as I despise the man for every drop of hatred that he spews, I do not blame him for the current situation in American politics. To do so would be to give him more credit than he deserves.

Donald Trump is nothing more than a power-hungry, egotistical, attention-thirsty man who will do anything for another second in the limelight. He is a caricature of a politician. He is not inherently evil, and is a far cry from the evil political mastermind some paint him to be. The truth is, Donald Trump is an opportunist and he has used the underlying hatred of American society to create a platform to build his own success.

There is a reason after years of threatening to run for president that he chose this election. Globally, politics today is at a crossroads and a rise in extremist ideologies has only made the polarization of parties that much more apparent. If we pay attention to the wider picture we realize that Trump is no more than a pawn in rising societal extremism, and we take away his electorate appeal. He is not going to "make America great again," he is not going to defeat ISIS, and he is not going to fix the economy because you cannot do these things when you base your policies on exclusivity, hatred and turning minorities into scapegoats.

Donald Trump is succeeding not because he is brainwashing the American public but because of a much scarier fact — he represents the views of many in the American electorate. He is the mascot of ignorance and hatred that is plaguing America but he is not the root cause of it.

It is time to face the harsh reality that America is not the tolerant nation of acceptance that it once painted itself to be. Trump is not the real issue in America, he is just the personification of the problem.

Whilst most would reject his positions because of morals, an international understanding or just pure rationality, Trump’s egotistical personality means he has rode this wave of bigotry through the political primaries and knocked out candidate after candidate with his ignorant statements and ridiculous hair.

Last week’s Wisconsin primary results suggest a change in political tide could be on the horizon but only time will tell. But should Trump be defeated and leave the presidential race altogether, that will not solve the political polarization that America is experiencing.

Stopping Donald Trump is only a short term solution. Should a fairy godmother appear and make the orange man with bad hair disappear from the political scene, he will not take with him all the fear mongering hatred that has been spewed across the American nation because he did not create it, he just gave it a mainstream voice. In the long term, America is going to have to deal with the root cause of the issue. As a society we will have to work toward creating a system that does not breed this underlying ignorance and bigotry that has made Trump so popular. Education is the only long-term solution to fight ignorance.

Donald Trump could retreat back into his millionaire mansion and go back to his billion dollar business, but the question of his supporters is not so easily answered. Will they retreat back underground? Or will the xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic views of many simply find another mascot to be the face of their hate campaign?

Ignorance and bigotry are the real problems America is facing right now and I don’t think Donald Trump is the only one to blame.