The official slogan of the Washington Post is, “Democracy Dies in Darkness”, adopted in 2017. The phrase was presumed to have been used first by the Post’s investigative reporter Bob Woodward in referencing the need for transparency in the investigations of Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. But Woodward acknowledges that the phrase actually came from Judge Damon Keith of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in a pre-Watergate era first amendment case involving wiretapping.

Origins of the phrase aside, the slogan has become a notable hallmark, almost a journalistic marque of the importance of a free press in search of facts, and not just for holding governments, but corporations and individuals accountable for their actions.

Strangling the free press is one of the first things strongmen dictators do to silence critics, and induce darkness to cover their corrupt activities, their malevolent antics, and anti-democratic abuses of power.

In today’s world, inducing darkness has become more nuanced. Throwing “shade” has often taken the twenty-first century form of disinformation and misinformation. Think of the tactic as a shady digital way to deflect responsibility for what you are doing or have done.

China’s control of information and freedom of speech is commensurate with Vladimir Putin’s intolerance for any opinions or information that conflicts with his authoritarian orthodoxy. If Putin, Xi and other authoritarians who fear truth, facts and transparency, just left their dark machinations to their own states, then the harm and consequences would at least be quarantined. But their insecurities and lust for global dominance are persistent.

As we approach the 2024 elections, both China and Russia aim to make their interference in these elections exponentially more egregious. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that “Online actors linked to the Chinese government are increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence to target voters in the U.S., Taiwan and elsewhere with disinformation, according to new cybersecurity research and U.S. officials.”

The power of these tactics is multiplied exponentially by generative AI. Their goal is to try to disunify the American electorate by stoking divisiveness over things like immigration, drugs, abortion, race, white nationalism, taxes, inflation and the American wealth gap. How insidious can these efforts be? The WSJ in citing another example reported that Microsoft said that “China sought to spread conspiratorial, false narratives across several platforms by alleging that the U.S. government had deliberately started the wildfires along the coast of Maui, Hawaii by testing a “weather weapon.”

As these global bad actors throw this highly toxic digital shade on our democracy and its institutions, it becomes increasingly critical that we exercise our democratic ideals and muscle to counter these demons of darkness. Democracies thrive on information, as the Washington Post insinuates. But the quality of that information is paramount. That’s why learning to fact-check or instinctively dismiss much of what appears in the toxic algae-bloom of information on the internet is so important. It’s why our schools and colleges need to be teaching our citizens how to disinfect the conspiracy infections that show up on the internet, how to fact check crazy stories like weather weapons, pizzagate, wind turbines causing cancer, or injecting bleach to stop the Covid virus.

Democracies thrive on information, but it has to be good information. Successful companies thrive on accurate data. So does our government. We the people need to practice the same discipline when we seek to learn about things, especially things that inhabit the digital universe. Democracies learn and grow on accurate information and they fail, often embarrassingly, on errant information. Misinformation and disinformation are to democracies like the United States, what Alabama football coach Nick Saban calls “rat poison” or bad information.

WSJ opinion writer Holman Jenkins Jr. warns us that an “October disinformation surprise is coming.” He has his own ideas of from whom and from where, but I am in agreement that it’s coming and not just in October. We Americans don’t like to be duped, so vigilance becomes part of the responsibility of citizens of our democracy. Indifference and complacency are behaviors that autocrats depend on to dupe and con their constituents into trusting them to take care of everything, and they further count on us in our democracies to make the same indolent mistakes as the world tide pushes waves of generative artificial intelligence, trying to pull the wool over our information eyes with a vengeance.

One final note that doesn’t necessarily relate directly to the particular message of this column, yet perhaps tangentially it does. This past week my son and his family came to visit from Colorado, and to experience the remarkable cosmic event of the total eclipse. We went to Xenia, found a beautiful grassy park and settled in with many other families, picnicking and playing, waiting in anticipation for the celestial surprise. The speaker at our church this weekend remarked that what was truly remarkable about this event, was that millions of people gathered across America to witness this galactic event, all races, all religions, all political stripes, in common interest and curiosity, peacefully. I may be wrong but I don’t recall any violence associated with the millions of these celestial witnesses.

In a country so riven with suspicion, divisiveness, anger, reprisals and retribution, how wonderfully joyful it was to be surrounded by people who seemed to be enjoying this peaceful civility as much as my family was. As a nation, if we could only embrace this same spirit of unity, solidarity and tranquility, our divisiveness would soon be eclipsed by the warmth of our humanity.

Bill Sims is a Hillsboro resident, retired president of the Denver Council on Foreign Relations, an author and runs a small farm in Berrysville with his wife. He is a former educator, executive and foundation president.