How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future

by Maria Ressa

Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without all three, we have no shared reality, and democracy as we know it—and all meaningful human endeavors—are dead.

Later, I would realize that an orchestra was a perfect metaphor for a working democracy: the music gave the people our notes, our systems, but how you play, feel, and follow—and how you lead—that’s all up to you.

What I was seeing in Indonesia was something I had seen in the Philippines and someday would see in countries around the world as the power of disinformation began to devastate the minds, and transform the behavior, of often less educated people or those less familiar with the internet. Education determines the quality of governance. An investment in education takes a generation to bear fruit. Likewise, countries feel the impact of this disregard for education a generation later. That determines their productivity, the quality of their workforce, their investments, and ultimately their gross domestic product (GDP).