I'm convinced the 2016 Clown sightings were potentially part of a psychological warfare campaign to help elect Donald Trump

Everybody so quickly forgets the other major news story of 2016, when weirdos dressed up as clowns started appearing in wooded areas, often standing menacingly or attempting to coerce passersby into the woods. It put a lot of people on edge, considering that these were masked strangers acting threatening in dark or unmonitored areas, before quickly moving on to suburban neighbourhoods. In addition to everything else, middle American suburbanites had to deal with the possibility they could wake up one night and see a clown outside wondering around their street, possibly with a sharp object to further compound the fact that a threat was imminent.

Now consider the more prominent headline of 2016 - Donald Trump goes up against Hillary Clinton in the Presidential election. I don't need to tell you about how divisive Trump was, or how outside-the-box bombastic he acted, but I did want to point out his tactic of vilifying the "other". According to the future nominee, everyone was out to get you; Mexicans were coming for your jobs, China was coming for our industry, Muslims were coming in to do terrorism, the Transgenders are coming for your bathrooms, African-Americans were coming to do crime, and ANTIFA were going to implement socialism, etc. It was very easy for him and his campaign to convince voters someone, or something, was coming to get them.

Of course, many voters across America just didn't see any of these people in their day to day. The populations of many rural states are predominantly caucasian, and isolated. Odds are if they kept to their quiet suburban neighbourhoods in bumblefuck nowhere they wouldn't see a black-clad ANTIFA rioter, or a jihadist suicide bomber, or even illegal Mexican immigrants needing work, depending on how near the border they were. To make a threat more immediate, it must be physical and, odds are, around every corner.

The answer is simple: send in the clowns.

Clowns are scary, it's sort of an unspoken cultural bias. Even if people don't have diagnosable coulrophobia we have been taught by films and tv that clowns are inherently frightening. Mix that with them appearing on the edge of wooded areas brandishing meat cleavers and trying to get children to come in behind the tree-line, and you've got yourself a sure-fire mix of paranoia en masse.

Hell, maybe the operatives from Trumps campaign only did a few Clown stunts themselves, like the initial instances in Wisconsin and South Carolina, and the rest was just copycat memesters, I'll give 'em that. And maybe I'm just reading too much into it and it's just a coincidence that creepy clowns started showing up several months before one of the most controversial elections, then DIPPED OFF just as election day rolled around. I dunno. What do you think?

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source https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracytheories/comments/keouv6/im_convinced_the_2016_clown_sightings_were/