>>109961596Springfield is a shit city. Remember that Bart damaging a statue got a violent mob, complete with torches and pitchforks, set on him. Nelson Muntz beat the shit out of him to the point where he was bleeding and not a single teacher or school official stepped in. Homer got his job as a nuclear safety inspector by being a loud protestor, and it wasn't for (in universe) several years that anyone checked if he was qualified. It drove him, and likely every other man at the plant, near-sterile.
There is a canonical building sized tire fire that has been going on for years, and the whole town literally stinks because of it. People just keep tossing tires in there.
The mayor and cops are corrupt. There's a well established mafia and yakuza presence. It has a maximum incarceration state facility that somehow also frequently allows violent offenders like Snake to enter and exit multiple times a year ("the Bart, the" was enough for the parole group to let an attempted Murderer out). There's sections of the city called Crackton and Junkyville.
Even if most of those came after the pink shirt incident, Springfield being a terrible place to live in is consistent throughout the show.
