Ooooooh boy, I'm going to get a warning for posting about conspiracy theories, aren't I?
But please hear me out! What would happen if a conspiracy theory ended up being true? Now, I won't even start about the most idiotic theories like lizard-people secretly running the government, or the Flat Earth theory. But let's say, what about one of the minor conspiracy theories?
Here's what I came up with: in 1972, president Richard Nixon was riding a wave of popularity considering his great success in foreign affairs as well as a strong U.S. economy. Naturally, anyone on the Democratic side going up against him in 1972 was on a fool's quest. and sure enough Nixon was re-elected in one of the biggest landslides in the history of American politics.
Now, a little known fact that has been pretty much lost in history is that there was a burglary in June 1972, at the Watergate complex in Washington, home of the Democratic National Committee. Months later, a couple of reporters from the Washington Post claimed that this break-in was not just some random crime like the hundreds of murders and burglaries happening in the USA on a daily basis, but in fact an act of political spying or sabotage orchestrated by Nixon's re-election campaign. With no actual evidence, the accusations eventually fizzled out, however much like people claiming that the moon landing was staged in a TV studio, or that the CIA was involved with the JFK assassination, or that the attack on the USS Maine in 1898 and the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 were all hoaxes, there will always be people who continue to claim to this day that Richard Nixon indeed covered up his administration's involvement with the Watergate break-in.
So several questions here. What would happen if it would turn out that this conspiracy theory was, in fact, true? What would Nixon have to gain from all this? What would the break-in be trying to achieve considering that Nixon was already on track to a massive victory in the 1972 election? And if uncovered, would Nixon have been impeached (or go to jail even??) and Spiro Agnew become president? Would the results of the 1972 be tainted, possibly with calls to hold another election immediately?
And if one day it would turn our that the government does in fact involve itself with conspiracies like this Watergate break-in, would other conspiracy theories gain more credibility? Would there be more investigations into things like the JFK assassination or the Gulf of Tonkin incident, or would these other conspiracy theories still be dismissed as idiotic and ASB?
In fact, would confirmed conspiracy theories change the policy here on alternatehistory.com that conspiracy theories are frowned upon and don't belong in the discussion on this forum?