During the so-called golden age of The Simpsons, the town of Springfield had three distinct faces, each of which is a beautifully complex and ambivalent take on populism. Most ugly and misanthropic is Springfield the Mob, a suspicious, bloodthirsty hoard of angry villagers driven collectively and primarily by their own conformity, rage, and libidinal cruelty. This is the Springfield that drives snakes into the center of town just to beat them to death for sport, or that gets swept into vicious sanctimony by media sensationalism to stalk and pillory an innocent man.

More social and humanist is Springfield the Good, a more or less righteous town of merciful egalitarians who unionize and strike to fight capitalists, or even march as one toward certain death rather than sacrifice a single member of their community (not even the most obnoxious one).

The most narratively rich iteration, though, is Springfield the Suckers. These are bumpkins, rubes, marks. They are impulsive fools, and all it takes is one charismatic huckster like Lyle Lanley (voiced by the late, great Phil Hartman) for them to invest in a costly (and deadly) monorail. In the classic episode “Marge vs. the Monorail,” Sucker Springfield is a cautionary tale against the dangers of unchecked populism as much as it is a warning against scams, but are the raucous masses really the easiest marks for would-be scammers?