Badlands Story Hour Ep. 174: Independence Day

Chris Paul and Burning Bright do a Fourth of July revisit of Roland Emmerich's 1996 blockbuster Independence Day, written by Emmerich and Dean Devlin and starring Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch, Randy Quaid, Harvey Fierstein, Vivica A. Fox, and Harry Connick Jr. Both guys expected to have fun with a summer classic. Instead they arrive at the same brutal verdict. This is one of the most heavy handed political programming vehicles of the 90s, and it goes down way rougher than nostalgia suggested. The conversation covers the pornographic scale of the destruction played for jokes, Will Smith joking his way through the supposed incineration of his girlfriend and her son, the closeted homoerotic Harry Connick Jr. subplot, the Jewish father written straight out of a stereotype guidebook, the recycling gospel Jeff Goldblum keeps preaching, and President Bill Pullman declaring the Fourth of July no longer American at the end. They dig into the 1996 to 2001 blockbuster window with Independence Day, Men in Black, and Armageddon as a coordinated push toward trust the government, trust the science, trust the globalists, plus Harry Connick Sr.'s real life role in taking down Jim Garrison after JFK. Also inside: predictive programming as preemptive psychological strike, the tip of the spear framework, change events, and why withholding belief beats decoding every time.