Sir, Times Are Different Now
Institutional inertia is going to take everything and everyone down
In Chinese internet culture, a popular slang term is: “大人，時代變了,” or “Sir, times are different now” when translated to English.
Although many online users employ it to portray strong contrasts and juxtapositions, its essence lies in highlighting a break from the constraints of traditional rules while utilizing more advanced means to solve problems.
As evident in recent politics and journalism, many people need to heed the advice from that single phrase.
One theme has become distressingly common: figures and institutions are unwilling to adopt the right changes, while clinging to dated models that were already in decline.
Coming in the backdrop of momentous political and cultural change, when new times call for new solutions, the reaction by those who can effectively make those changes seems incapable of doing so.
These are the same people baffled by why their popularity and outreach are dropping like flies, while still doing the same things that actively humiliate their positions even more, without noticing it’s bad.
Figures who cling to these views say they are principled figures, claiming they are the bulwarks of what’s lost in society due to paradigm shifts.
At best, they are counterproductive but funny.
At worst, they are actively making things worse than it is, and are undermining the beliefs they hold dear at the same time.
Or in a 30-second visual and audio summary, this:
With all the chaos going on in both media and world politics, a common thread is connections. Since the COVID era, the effects of isolation, both literal and metaphorical, are metastasizing in new and sometimes alarming ways. For many, their craving for connection lies in finding community and people who share their opinions and views, which makes them feel less lonely and more important.
As a result, people crave authenticity. People want leaders and those in power to address their concerns because the establishment, like it or hate it, has failed to either take action or even talk about these issues with regular citizens. They want people to fight for what they believe in, not just delivering speeches and talking a big game about their ideas.
Whether it is Zohran Mamdani or Donald Trump, they have a knack for reaching everyday voters. These are the people who mostly don’t care about the nuts and bolts of politics, but they do care about the price of eggs (I know, its a cliche at this point) going up, how difficult it is to afford rent, and why are things not working as efficiently or effectively as it used to be.
Leaders who succeed in both the political and media realms know how to galvanize people over abstract issues and transform them to follow their narrative. As we have seen with the transgender and immigration debates, what have been sensible conversations about human rights and differing opinions on how to effectively treat them as members of society have evolved into hateful dialogue about “groomers” and “vermin.”
Culture wars are effective because they don’t need to make sense, emotion and outrage are currency, and the worst people who succeed in this field are often the best at mastering changes in societal behavior.
This brings me to institutional inertia, especially its tendency to resist any change. In politics, people who act within institutional inertia believe the tried and tested political tactics they have used for most of their careers will work right now against new challenges. These people are commonly politicians, backed by the strategists and pundits who share similar views.
While in journalism, institutional inertia mostly comes from the top down. Sometimes they are the profit-seeking executives who will do anything to preserve a quick buck, burying or cancelling stories of importance in exchange for cheap clickbait or just because they want to obey in advance.
In other instances, they are editorial decisions made by editors or reporters themselves. Sometimes they would cut out a story or parts of a news report because they think it’s beneath them to broadcast such content, or they would amplify comments and backdoor gossip like it was the biggest story of the century. In other instances, editors might selectively remove news stories just because they think it is irrelevant.
The most egregious example that applies to both politics and journalism is the prevalence of bothsidesism and “he-said-she-said” reporting. As I have ranted before, bothsideism is when the accused side conflates one bad thing they did with another thing that they argue is bad from the accuser’s side. Meanwhile, the “he-said-she-said” reporting style is common in political news, especially if journalists have soundbites and do not have time to write any more content.
In my view, looking at political developments and news stories simply in a “one person says this, one person says that” without providing context and factual information does a disservice to viewers. This allows politicians and pundits to lie as they please, because in their logic, another’s wrong cancels out the personal wrong they have committed or supported.
It’s petty, it’s counterproductive, and it’s stupid.
A famous Chinese expression is “to point at a deer and call it a horse,” which describes deliberate misrepresentation for ulterior purposes. However, I don’t think a reporter’s job is to see that coming from political figures and say: “Well, technically, even though it isn’t correct to call a deer a horse, they do share similarities. First of all, they walk on four legs…” or “Well, what is a deer and what is a horse? You see, animals are just animals, and it’s easy to mix up the two…”
In real life, it’s not far to see institutional inertia in action. In politics, small-l liberal parties have taken a beating in recent months against insurgent populism, which has cracked the formula of manipulating and controlling human instincts to their benefit. In the US, Democrats have been feckless in responding to Trump’s threats of authoritarianism, and party supporters are desperately seeking fresh and new leadership to replace outdated models like Chuck Schumer (See above) and Hakeem Jeffries.
Even with a successful case like Zohran Mamdani, his upset win faces resistance from members of his party. Who are these people? The usual figures who live by the motto of institutional inertia, and are unwilling to realize that the formula of Mamdani’s success could be the way forward for Democrats.
Affordability is on the minds of many people, including many Mamdani-Trump voters. Take the case of Asian Americans who supported the Republican candidate in the 2024 election and then the democratic socialist in the recent New York mayoral primary.
Assemblymember Ron Kim, who represents Flushing, said the 2024 Trump campaign’s focus on affordability and public safety appealed to many economically ascendant middle-class Asian Americans.
“I think our party, the Democratic Party, has stopped listening to the concerns of working immigrants for some time,” he said. “Community safety, protecting small businesses, expanding access to specialized high schools. These are the issues that my constituents have repeatedly talked about, and no one really paid attention.”
Centrist Democrats, Kim said, just haven’t been able to offer a competing vision to Trump’s. That’s until Mamdani came along in this year’s mayoral election.
Catherine Chen, the executive director of the Asian American Federation, said Mamdani’s campaign, also focused on affordability, resonated with members of the community. According to the Asian American Federation’s own research, about half of Asian households in New York City are rent-burdened and more likely to be overcrowded than the typical household in the city.
Not only is the Democratic establishment not listening to voters in general, but they have also swayed away from listening to their supporters at all.
Democrats want new leaders for their party, which many feel isn't focusing enough on economic issues and is over-emphasizing issues like transgender rights and electric vehicles, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
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Some 62% of self-identified Democrats in the poll agreed with a statement that "the leadership of the Democratic Party should be replaced with new people." Only 24% disagreed and the rest said they weren't sure or didn't answer.
Democrats' dissatisfaction is also playing out in leadership changes, including this week's resignation of Randi Weingarten, the influential president of the American Federation of Teachers, from the Democratic National Committee -- which followed the ouster of progressive activist David Hogg.
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Democratic respondents said the party should be doing more to promote affordable childcare, reduce the price of prescription drugs, make health insurance more readily available and support mass transit. They view party leaders as less passionate about those issues than they are, the poll found.
Even so, some Democrats argue the party also needs to stand toe-to-toe with Trump. “They gotta get mean,” said Dave Silvester, 37, of Phoenix.
Democrats should both recognize they need to fight harder against Trump and oppose his most extreme policies (See Aligator Alcatraz and the negative effects of the Big Beautiful Bill), while making a cogent and compelling message to attract voters in the 2026 midterms and beyond.
In other countries, institutional inertia leads to a loss of direction for incumbent liberal parties, which in turn causes more failure.
Take the case of the UK Labour Party. This time last year, the party under Sir Keir Starmer was triumphant after its crushing victory against the Tories.
However, the party’s lack of political direction, backbone, and willingness to take drastic actions such as raising taxes has led to chaos in its domestic policy, culminating in embarrassing climbdowns during the welfare bill debate this month.
Now, one year later, the party’s performance is in deep trouble.
Labour came to power hoping to be a beacon for European and American centrists beset by populist merchants of division and chaos like Mr Farage. Sir Keir boasted that he would attack Britain’s structural crises by combining a technocratic cabinet with a mighty parliamentary majority. In place of Conservative gimmicks, he would engineer deep reforms. Growth would return, public services would stir and Britons’ faith in the political system would be restored.
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Britain is stuck in its longest period of economic stagnation since the 1930s. The public finances do not add up. The cost of servicing debt as a share of GDP is the highest since 1987. In the 1980s only 12% of voters thought the prime minister would put party before country; today only 12% expect Labour to put country first. On election morning Sir Keir called trust in government “the battle that defines our age”; under Labour, trust is at a 40-year low.
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More probably, Sir Keir will sink further. His government appears to have lost confidence among investors, and his chancellor’s credibility has vaporised: it is unclear how long she will survive in office. After this week, the prime minister will struggle to enforce discipline in Parliament. Rather than try to pass ambitious legislation, he is more likely to try to soothe irate MPs and buy off his base with a thin smear of jam today.
A Labour Party that chooses popularity over hard reforms will end up with neither. Deeper crisis could shake Britain out of its stupor, but if the malaise continues it may well be Mr Farage who rides to power promising change. That should be Labour’s warning to centrists everywhere.
In the end, this is the cautionary tale and worrying end to institutional inertia, especially for liberal parties. Being on the moral high ground doesn’t mean you win the argument by default. People need to put in the effort and take real action, know where the society is at, and offer a new and refreshing solution that benefits all. Institutional inertia prohibits people from seeing the big picture or thinking of alternative viewpoints and solutions to certain issues. By the end of the day, everything is lost, including the “principles” that those with institutional inertia believe in.
If you think everything’s fine while sitting in a raging coffee shop, the fire surrounding you might not matter for only a few moments before the pain kicks in.
As for journalism, just providing bland, neutral facts is now not enough. Given the decentralized media ecosystem, I would argue that traditional news outlets (Print, radio, TV, you name it) need to up their game and take inspiration from fellow outlets that operate in the independent universe.
One good example is MeidasTouch, which has garnered millions of followers and is currently the most downloaded and viewed podcast in the US. It doesn’t shy away from covering news issues that traditional news outlets find inconvenient or unnecessary. Quite opposite, it prides itself in covering news items that have flown underneath the news radar for many media outlets.
When journalism is informing people, reporters and editors need to stop thinking in the dull mindset of fact-dumping. They need to make it more interesting.
No, I am not talking about infotainment through shouting matches and bland commentary shows, I mean putting context and additional information within reporting. Explainers are a good start, and analysis articles can help readers learn more about the details and key concepts popping up in the news.
In reporting, try to make things more interesting by providing multiple angles to a story, but not through the simple “he-said-she-said” fashion. Provide additional context and information to show why they made such comments and how accurate they are, and give in-depth background information on why this matters or doesn’t matter to people.
Alternatively, the newsroom should embrace different ideas and editorial choices from all actors working on the same story. For example, hypothetically, if Country A prepares to sign onto a nuclear non-proliferation treaty and a separate trade deal during an international summit, maybe don’t stick to only reporting on the trade deal. You could try starting with the nuclear treaty and why it matters, or is more interesting than your audience thinks it is, or try to mix them both throughout the report.
In an age where people want clarity and necessary information, I would argue that even the so-called “unnecessary” events and facts are worth covering. The industry, yours truly included, needs to be humbled when deciding which content should be news outlets for their audience. There is no one single answer to editorial judgment issues and how news issues should be reported. Believing reporters should only follow one format of news writing is not helpful. Focusing on money, power, and fights is fun and cool, but it should not distract us from identifying when right is right and when wrong is wrong.
Journalists need to see their work less as commercial opportunities or just bland public service PR recitals, and more as nutritionists providing parts of a healthy media diet to the audience.
Or else, traditional media can continue on its path to irrelevance. With declining trust, smaller viewership, and an end to journalism as a credible source of facts and information. At the end, it hurts us all.
This is not to say people should willy-nilly abandon all previously-held principles and just do whatever is attractive to the broader public. I am arguing for reform and a revision of how to improve both politics and journalism from their current shape and form. It’s far from perfect, but the alternative will be devastating as time moves on.