The life-giving, death-dealing power of corn - The Economist | Hong Kong’s problems trace back to China. And also America - The Economist | Inside the last true political machine in America - The Economist | Why Donald Trump is gaining ground with young voters

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The life-giving, death-dealing power of corn - The Economist

A plain wooden house in a sea of cotton. A gaunt woman is sat at the kitchen table, mouth parched, insides burning. She is dying. Across her face a rash has spread from her nose to her ears, a red butterfly resting its giant wings against her cheeks. She is used to its return, for three springs since 1903. By summer it took off, took with it the terrible thirst and the pain.

Not this time. Next comes the delirium. Her children stare at her wide-eyed; her husband takes her to the asylum. Two weeks and she is dead. And yet, as he will tell anyone who listens, they’d never gone hungry: home-baked cornbread and fatback, johnnycakes with molasses, and always plenty of grits.

Pellagra was first seen in southern Europe, in the mid-1700s. Its cause and cure were still unknown when it showed up in the American state of Georgia in 1902. A decade later the disease had become a “national calamity”, said the surgeon-general. It was South Carolina’s second-biggest killer after tuberculosis.

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Hong Kong’s problems trace back to China. And also America - The Economist

Sevva, a swanky bar and restaurant with electrifying views, has been serving bankers and sightseers for more than 15 years. From its terrace, you can peer over a cocktail and through the office windows of HSBC across the road. The restaurant’s cuisine is meant to be “fresh, simple and honest”. Yet it is not cheap. An oversized dosa, a humble South Indian breakfast food, will set you back HK$380 (almost $50). Some patrons eat them with a knife and fork.

In May, sadly, the restaurant will close. That has not helped the morale of the city’s beleaguered financial industry. Hong Kong’s main stockmarket index has plunged by more than a quarter since late January. Its index for smaller, “growth” enterprises is well below the trough it reached in October 2022, before China began lifting the quarantine requirements that starved Hong Kong of visitors.

Amid such depressed sentiment, the money raised from initial public offerings came to just HK$37bn in the first 11 months of 2023 (see chart), the least for 20 years. Mainlanders have described Exchange Square, where the bourse is located, as a “ruin”. Unlike New York’s financial district, which features a bronze statue of a charging bull, the square features two bronze water buffalo, one lying flat.

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Inside the last true political machine in America - The Economist

Egyptian pharaohs left the pyramids. Donald E. Stephens left a Museum of Hummels. These are porcelain dolls, based initially on paintings by Maria Hummel, a German nun. Stephens was, until his death in 2007, the mayor of Rosemont, Illinois. His collection of Hummels, which is on display in a strip mall, is apparently the world’s largest. It includes rare figurines of soldiers at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. The museum is a monument to kitsch, and to a dynasty.

Politics in Rosemont is a family affair. Stephens and his son, Brad (pictured below), have run the city for almost 70 years. It is perhaps America’s last true political machine. It reminds your correspondent, who has spent years reporting in Africa, of Gabon, a petrostate that was ruled by the same family for 56 years. The parallels between these two very different places reveal much about power, not as a civics textbook describes it, but as canny, charming men actually wield it.

The village of Rosemont was founded in 1956 on land that was then (according to the official history) a rubbish dump on the edge of Chicago. Stephens, then a 27-year-old businessman, was among a group of people who decided to incorporate as a city, literally picking the name out of a hat. The city came into its own after it traded a strip of land with Chicago to allow the expansion of O’Hare airport.

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Why Donald Trump is gaining ground with young voters - The Economist

As tastemakers, the two previous American presidents could not present a sharper contrast. Barack Obama, with his elegance and irony, still issues year-end lists of the best music, movies and books, each a triumph of accessible urbanity that blends in just enough Lizzo and “Top Gun: Maverick” to help the Abdulrazak Gurnah go down. To Mr Obama’s mix-mastery Donald Trump counterposed a signature style of ostentatious kitsch. His braggadocio, his combativeness, his gilded lairs, his manner of associating with women: all these led a New Yorker writer, Jelani Cobb, to note as far back as 2015, “in all the ways that matter, save actual performing, Donald Trump is not a politician—he’s a rapper.”

And yet, as president, Joe Biden has found a way to stand apart from both the DJ and the rapper, and from all other presidents of the modern era: he is leaving almost no cultural imprint whatsoever. John Kennedy may have altered the course of men’s fashion by not wearing a hat during his inauguration, but Mr Biden failed to spark a revival of The Staple Singers by including their music on his inauguration playlist. Aviator glasses and ice cream cones, maybe a ride in Delaware on a bicycle, are the pop signifiers, to date, of the Biden presidency.

It would, of course, be patronising to suggest that Mr Biden’s lack of engagement with the broader culture, rather than his handling of weighty affairs such as the war in Gaza, is behind his struggle to connect with young Americans. But it cannot be helping. What is clear is that he has a problem, one that encapsulates his overall challenge headed into his re-election campaign. Young voters, who were key to his win in 2020, are just not into him.

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