Depicting the President with a Hitler-stache is all the rage these days. During a recent health insurance forum in Dartmouth, Mass., a young woman asked Congressman Barney Frank why he supported President Barack Obama’s proposed “Nazi policy” of universal health care.

“Ma'am,” the congressman replied, “trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table.” He asked, “On what planet do you spend most of your time?”

Had her mic not been cut off, the young woman might have replied, “Prison Planet” — the name of an anti-Obama website and online community helmed by talk radio host and professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

For those unfamiliar with Jones, he is essentially Rush Limbaugh meets Michael Moore meets disheveled man shouting obscenities on the street corner. His claim to fame is his role in galvanizing the 9/11 “truthers” — a fringe group that believes the twin towers were brought down in a controlled demolition orchestrated by “foreign bankers” in order to scare Americans into giving up their civil liberties (and firearms) so that they will be defenseless when the New World Order emerges and enslaves everybody.

Jones’ latest effort, a feature-length, straight-to-YouTube release that has racked up a staggering 3.75 million views over the past six months, is called “The Obama Deception.” The premise is that Obama, far from the catalyst for change he claims to be, intends to turn the United States into Nazi Germany and then hand the country over to his puppet-masters.

While the New World Order conspiracy theory is not in itself new, interest in it seems to have spiked since Obama took office.

(Just try typing “Oba” into the Google search bar: “Obama deception” is the fifth suggestion generated.)

In part, this phenomenon is the inevitable result of the democratization of and by the Internet. As computer literacy becomes the norm, society’s most deranged are able to form networks with one another and propagate their ideas to a larger audience without censor or a sense of accountability.

And more so than any of his predecessors, Obama is a president the deranged can really seek their teeth into, posing as he does such a tangible threat to the status quo; and revolutionizing, as he likely will, the ways in which nations interact and co-operate with one another.

In the past month alone Obama has cancelled proposed Cold War-esque missile sites in Poland and Ukraine, convinced Russia and China to support a resolution to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and pledged before the United Nations General Assembly to begin a new era of U.S. engagement with the world.

His unparalleled ability to reconcile opposing beliefs — or at least to inspire hope that reconciliation is possible, which in itself is powerful — was acknowledged by former Republican secretary of state, lifelong conservative and Obama supporter Colin Powell when he stated, “[Obama] is a transformational figure. He is a new generation coming into the world [and] onto the world stage.”

Because his appeal crosses so many borders, both political and ideological, Barack Obama is in many ways the first global president.

The paradigm has shifted: the G.O.P. is no longer relevant and, as The New York Times columnist David Brooks pointed out earlier this week, the Democrat vs. Republican archetype is now an “obsolete culture war.”

Put simply, the next cultural war will be fought between those who embrace progress and those who oppose it.

It is only fitting that Jones emerges as one of the loudest rallying criers against Obama; he seems not only opposed to progress, but altogether incapable of it.

During a particularly fiery rant on his show Jones told his listeners, “I want you to rise up and get fired up. And get angry. And just start grinding your teeth. And just get mentally ready ... ’cause if they keep pushing we’re gonna take ’em. And I mean take ’em savage. I mean run ’em down. I mean take their heads and just ram them into the concrete.”

Were it not for the fact that he holds considerable sway over the emerging anti-Obama, anti-progress, anti-logic movement in the United Sates, Jones wouldn’t be worthy of notice.

But with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck now representing mainstream conservatism in America, Alex Jones has become the new poster boy for the lunatic fringe.

Cody Gault is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He may be reached at cgault@cornellsun.com. Stakes Is High appears alternate Fridays this semester.