Let’s say they reach an accord in the Middle East. Some hard bargaining, some painful concessions, but now they’re ready to sign an historic agreement ending generations of enmity and warfare. Peace is at hand.

Then a man from Country A goes to a bazaar in Country B and detonates a bomb. Enraged, Country B turns the treaty into confetti. The next sound you hear is the whistle of incoming missiles.

In diplomatic circles, they call that the terrorist veto, the ability of a single obscure malcontent, powerless but for his willingness to sacrifice lives, to make himself heard at the highest level of geopolitics and force his way upon the international stage.

As recent events make oppressively clear, the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle have evolved an analog to the terrorist veto. Call it the idiot veto – the ability of a single obscure malcontent, powerless but for his willingness to do some appalling thing, to make himself heard at the highest level of geopolitics and force his way upon the international stage.

His name is Terry Jones, and he’s the little-known pastor of a tiny church – 50 members – in Gainesville, Fla. Twenty years ago, his proclamation of “International Burn a Koran Day” MIGHT have gotten him a few minutes on the rump end of the local TV newscast.

But that was before mass media exploded and every one of us became a news purveyor unto him- or herself. Jones’ bigoted idiocy – and yes, he has a constitutional right to be a bigoted idiot – has won him worldwide attention. His story has appeared in the Miami Herald, CNN, the London Daily Telegraph, the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Irish Times, the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, the New Zealand Herald and al-Jazeera, to name a few. He has been condemned from Indonesia to Egypt, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has blasted him and even the president felt compelled to weigh in.

And here, it bears repeating: Terry Jones is a podunk preacher no one ever heard of before this. Yet, from that humble repose, he was able to move the world. The impli- cations are staggering.

These words are written before, but will be published after, Jones’ scheduled event so I can’t comment on what did or did not happen. But I can say this: As Paris Hilton’s “career” amply demonstrates, the blossoming of new media and the corresponding need to keep them fed have made fame and its evil cousin, notoriety, impossibly cheap.

Once, we had hoped for higher things. There is, after all, an enduring human conceit which holds that improved communication between everyday people equals improved understanding between nations, equals peace. That conceit is as old as the folks who wondered how there could be a Civil War since North and South were linked by telegraph, and as modern as the Ellen Page commercial for Cisco Systems where children in the U.S. video chat with their counterparts in China.

Our faith in communication to bring people together has occasionally been validated; think of how cell phone video of a dying woman named Neda brought the world to the side of Iranian protesters.

But often, that faith seems naive, if not misplaced. Mass media magnify the bizarre and deservedly obscure, giving it access to the world – and its leaders. Like Lincoln at the theater, the world finds itself vulnerable to the single deranged lunatic. History spins on the whims of whoever is willing to be crazy enough.

That’s too much power to accord a Terry Jones, who, should it need saying, has no business on the international stage. But there he is anyway, in all his ignorant glory, proving the fundamental flaw of our faith in the promise of enhanced communications.

You see, technology evolves quickly. People, unfortunately, do not.