After Donald Trump was named TIME’s 2016 Person of the Year, with Hillary Clinton coming in second, America has learned that the most influential person of the year has not necessarily made a positive difference.
TIME has not previously shied away from giving the award to controversial figures, among them Adolf Hitler (1938) and Josef Stalin (1939, 1942).
Unsurprisingly, there has been disagreement surrounding TIME’s choice. This kind of controversy is exactly what brought attention to Trump, and naming him person of the year has been another acknowledgment of his influence.
For most of Trump’s life, people dismissed him as a vulgar showman with big flash and little substance. What those critics never understood was that their disdain gave him strength.
Campaigning for nearly 17 months, Trump, with defiant flair, magnified the divisions of the present rather than glorifying the possibilities of the future, bringing new levels of anger and fear throughout the country. Whatever you think of the man, his strategy uncovered an opportunity that others didn’t believe existed.
For some, Trump appeared more real than his adversaries, the scripted political pros. Despite boasting on video that he sexually assaulted women, he found a way to win white females by 9 points.
Trump’s campaign was never about the details. He capitalized on mob mentality, something he has done all his life. He knew how to win a crowd.
In the weeks after his victory, hundreds of incidents of harassment — against women, Muslims, immigrants and racial minorities — were reported across the country. Again, controversy gave him even more attention.
No presidential candidate in recent American history has done or said as many outlandish and offensive things as Trump. He cheered when protesters got hit at his rallies, insulted members of the press and argued that an American judge with Mexican heritage should be disqualified from a case.
Furthermore, Trump promised to sue the dozen women who came forward to say they had been sexually mistreated by him over the years. He claimed that he wouldn’t have accepted the outcome of the election if it did not go his way.
The truth is, no one really knows what is going to happen. This is now Trump’s America to run.
It’s a country where many who felt powerless have a new champion, where frustration has given way to excitement and where politics has become the greatest show on earth.
It’s an America where hijab-wearing students report being attacked and jeered at in the next president’s name, where American-born children with non-citizen parents worry that Trump will deport them.
It’s an America of renewed hope for some and paralyzing fear for others. Because of Donald J. Trump, whatever happens next, nothing will ever be the way it was before.