It’s been a little under a year since Donald Trump declared he would run for the Republican presidential nomination. Throughout this time, he has gained many enemies but also a substantial amount of supporters. This isn’t unusual during any presidential race. However, Trump’s platform is different and, in reality, incredibly frightening.

Trump opened up his campaign with a focus on his illegal immigration policies. He blamed Mexico’s government for sending over drug dealers, rapists, and criminals instead of “their best” and even suggested building a wall along the Mexican-U.S. border, making Mexico pay for it. Then, as the Syrian Refugee Crisis reached its peak, Trump came out with policy ideas to ban all Muslims from entering the country and force those already living here to carry identification cards connecting them to their faith.

This is not the worst of it. Through everything, Trump has caused a lot of commotion among many people in the United States. Between his views on immigration and his countless tasteless comments on multiple groups of people, one would think that he would rank at the bottom of the polls.

But he isn’t. In fact, he is at the top of most polls.

So what does this say about the American public? When such a large group of people supports racist, sexist, and many other derogatory remarks, is there any hope to “Make America Great Again” as Trump says he will?

This is what makes Trump so frightening. He brings out the worst in people in the name of “telling it as it is.” Wherever he goes, violence, whether verbal or physical, inevitably falls in his wake. In his effort to gain the presidency, he is pitting the American citizens against one another in ways that I can’t remember ever happening before. Instead of being one country, united, we are fractured and falling apart a little bit every day.

Some may say that the United States was never truly united. From our founding, we have been a country-bred out of oppression, war, and inequality. In context: we started out as a refuge for those persecuted in England, shortly launched into a war to secure our liberty, but then went ahead and exploited everything we worked for and oppressing those we perceived as different from ourselves. When Trump says he “wants to make America great again,” what exactly is he referring to?

I haven’t yet met a Trump supporter. If I had, the first question would be, "Why?" Why support someone who isn’t looking to treat everyone as equal human beings in what is supposed to be the best country in the world? If we aren’t willing to accept equality, freedom, and basic human rights for all, not just a select few, we will never reach the "harmony" necessary to resolve the multitude of problems facing our world today such as poverty, climate change, and oppression, all issues Trump seems to neglect mentioning or discussing. There is no use in pretending that these problems don’t exist and to believe otherwise is foolish.