Once, there was a rock on top of a peak, a very sharp and unforgiving rock that hadn’t become smooth from erosion, but instead harsh from a series of cracks and strikes. On one particularly cold and wet winter, the rock that had been perched so high atop the mountain of snow and muck jumped from its throne and began its descent down the slope. Now this rock had never known anything outside of conflict and violence regarding other rocks, as it had been weathered by force through its neighboring rocks for as long as it had broken off from its original boulder; it tumbled down the cliffs with no grace, yet surviving all the same. As it bounced and bounced, it began to wrap itself in the thick snow below it. The snow that, while seated in his sanctuary above the clouds, seemed so vastly different to the rock, now clung to him like a lost child. The snow yearned to be disturbed after a winter of nothing but the routine, even if it meant being sullied from the rock’s dirt in the process. The blanket of snow grew, and it grew, until the rock itself shed its identity as a rock, and grew that of the largest snow ball of the season. Anyone looking upon the colossus who failed to marvel at its mere existence and arrogant insistence upon notoriety would have been he who had never witnessed it in the first place.

And here, in this analogy that I made up just now, we find the phenomenon of Trump’s campaign.

Donald Trump has been toying with the idea of running for elected office for decades now, but has refused as he stated in 2011 because: “business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector.” A fair enough reason in and of itself, but in classic Trump style, he began that thought that he “maintain(s) the strong conviction that if (he) were to run, (he) would be able to win the primary and, ultimately, the general election.”* And if the election was today, he wouldn’t be that far off.

Trump has a 30.0% chunk of the vote for the Republican Party right now; out of a field of fifteen (mostly) capable candidates. To put that into perspective; that is nearly double what the current runner-up, Ben Carson, is mustering up with roughly 16.0% of the vote on the GOP side**. Trump is leading by 4 percentage points in the Iowa Republican Caucus and he has reportedly “not spent a dime on advertising” in the Hawkeye state. Instead he has let his massive image, and at-the-surface hard to argue with success in the private sector do the talking for him. His 4.13 million followers on Twitter, (for reference, Pope Francis has 7.07 million followers), are evidence that he’s being listened to.

He is heard, regardless of what he says. He trips, yet he makes no excuses, only implies that his stumble was not a mistake by him, but a visual failure on those observing or critiquing him***. He goes over the line, but instead of apologizing like the political cycle dictates, he insists that what he is saying isn’t wrong and that, in fact, the people offended at his comments are wrong for being the target of his speech in the first place****. He harshly bounces from topic to topic, yet he gains more white support- I mean snow, as he goes.

But who are these people that are willing to tie their names to Trump no matter the consequences? They’re tired of the cycle. They’re tired of the status quo. They’re tired of people who can be “bought” holding office. They want something new. They want something from the outside. They want someone who says something no one else is saying, for better or worse. And right now, Trump is their guy. Much like the humble peanut “farmer” Jimmy Carter, Donald Trump is the anti-establishment candidate. He is the people who have had enough with government officials’ choice for the highest government office.

Trump has superseded himself as an individual. He is a body of fans, haters, and everyone still trying to figure out if this election is serious in its nature. He is an idea now, not just a man. Nobody can stop talking about him.  I didn’t even want to write about him in our paper, yet here I am. Regardless of what happens this election, Trump is going in the history books, and that in and of itself is something to be impressed by.

Sources:

*http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/16/donald-trump-us-presidential-race

**http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/president/

***http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34135543

****http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/trump-attacks-mccain-i-like-people-who-werent-