With the final nominees settled and three months of campaigning ahead, this American election season is likely to be one of the most tumultuous in recent memory.  That's okay; political contests, especially south of the border, have ever been tumultuous affairs.Yet there has never been anything like the showdown that has been building for months, largely because of Donald Trump.  It almost seems like nothing new can be written about him.  Appearing not to care what people say of him, the Republican candidate speaks with a directness that isn't so much targeted as scattered about in every direction.  This results in his dominating every news cycle, breaking every political protocol, and promoting a political war that seems to break every bond of respectability.But in very real and concerning ways this election isn't about Donald Trump at all, but the startling extent to which millions of US citizens are apparently willing to go in order to send a message to the political elites of both parties in Washington.  That people are upset with the financial bailouts, the fallout from globalization, stubborn unemployment, and political dysfunction, is a given.  But is the best choice to send that message an individual who doesn't respect numerous groups of immigrants and nations, who carries few credentials for the top political job in the land, and who scatters the election landscape with landmines designed to blow up at any time in order maintain the chaos that has so come to characterize public life in America at the moment?It is likely that there has never been such a year in American political history, when so many citizens disliked so many other citizens from all points of view and for such nonsensical reasons.  When Trump said, “I will build a wall because nobody builds walls better than me,” he provided the modus operandi of his campaign.Much has gone into the creation of this condition, but Donald Trump has been its main instigator.  Is this really what Americans want, or are they just angry enough to suspend the traditional traits of respect and progress in order to get their point across?  If so, then this America looks more like the America of 1927, where a season of prejudice became so combustible that more people were deported from Ellis Island than permitted in.In tolerating so many lesser evils hoping that they will all add up to the so-called greater good, many good citizens are collectively guilty of bad math.  It all merely adds up to political decline by calling for the baser instincts of a once proud nation.In a boisterous era where citizens around the world are demanding seats at the tables of power more than ever, it becomes a major setback when the nominee for the GOP says things like: “Only I know what's best for America,” or, “I will be your voice.”  The need for a saviour, a political redeemer, the “great man,” is precisely the kind of political attitude that hundreds of millions of people have been endeavouring to shake off around the world.  The fate of democracy lies not in the giant footprints of the powerful leaders, but in the millions of collective footsteps taken by global citizens interested in sharing power and fighting for a more equitable future among all peoples.Do Americans truly desire a politics of resentment, where everyone is against everyone else?  In a world where hate is as near as a keyboard or a gun, do people honestly wish to put power in the hands of a Commander-in-Chief that could place an army or a grand policy behind his animosities?  With tolerant societies now fighting for their lives in Europe and other places, does a troublingly divided America honestly think it can lead from the middle of the pack?Something is growing terribly amiss in our popular and moral culture when a man who openly insults any woman, race, immigrant, or vulnerable person finds a possible path to the White House.  If being president is earned more on the basis of the power to divide -- and bears no responsibility to unite the population -- then somebody has goofed.  Rather than taking the easy way of looking for a voice, citizens themselves must raise their own voices in ways that bring a nation together.  And if that nation is a global leader, then there exists also the possibility of working with others to bring the world together.Donald Trump's greatest blunder is believing that it is his voice that matters in a time when citizens themselves are craving to find their own articulation – for him there is no “team” in “I”.  When a top presidential contender tells a crowd, “Frankly folks, if I don't win this thing, then it was a total waste of time for me,” what does that say about his view of the average citizen and the struggles of their own lives?Glen Pearson was a career professional firefighter and is a former Member of Parliament from southwestern Ontario.  He and his wife adopted three children from South Sudan and reside in London, Ontario.  He has been the co-director of the London Food Bank for 29 years.  He writes regularly for the London Free Press and also shares his views on a blog entitled “The Parallel Parliament“.   Follow him on twitter @GlenPearson.