OSBOURNE COX: The Russians?

HAL: Uh-huh.

COX: The Russians?

HAL: Uh-huh. Russian embassy, yeah.

COX: Are you sure?

HAL: Hey, the guy was not hard to follow. As you know.

COX: Why the fuck would they go to the Russians?! Why the fuck? –Burn After Reading (2008)

Imagine a group of dunderheaded Americans who think they would benefit from a covert alliance with the Russian government. They make overtures to that country’s ambassador, blithely ignorant that they’ll be monitored by U.S. intelligence. A series of cascading mistakes ultimately brings disaster crashing down on their heads.

That might sound like a summary of the latest news about the White House, but it is also the plot of Burn After Reading, the 2008 film that stands as singularly prophetic of the Trump era. The Coen Brothers’ black comedy echoes this unique period in history not only because of the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russian operatives, but the wider culture of deceit that made Donald Trump’s rise possible. More than just a satire on espionage, the movie is a scathing critique of modern America as a superficial, post-political society where cheating of all sorts comes all too easily. Unlike movies such as Citizen Kane, Burn After Reading doesn’t offer any easy one-to-one character analogies to Trump and his cronies. Rather, it captures the amorality that leads people to become entangled in mercenary treason.

Burn After Reading is a divisive film. The New Yorker’s David Denby spoke for many when he complained that it suffered from “terminal misanthropy.” Yet it is precisely because the film takes such a dim view of humanity that it seems eerily true to life. It’s not just that the characters in the film are almost all amoral, but that they are so relentlessly stupid. These are not the super-heroic secret agents found in James Bond movies or the Mission Impossible franchise. They aren’t even the grubby but competent professional spooks of John Le Carré. Rather, the plot of the movie is driven by imbeciles who have only the most limited understanding of the world around them. As such, they call to mind figures like Donald Trump Jr. and the music promoter Robert Goldstone, who were witless enough to discuss over email the Russian government’s support of the Trump campaign:

GOLDSTONE: The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.

TRUMP JR.: Seems we have some time and if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.

As Ross Douthat noted in his latest New York Times column, the Russia scandal is notable for the sheer idiocy of its key figures thus far. “The mix of inexperience, incaution and conspiratorial glee on display in the emails suggests that people in Trump’s immediate family—not just satellites like Roger Stone—would have been delighted to collude if the opportunity presented itself,” Douthat wrote. “Indeed, if the Russians didn’t approach the Trump circle about how to handle the D.N.C. email trove, it was probably because they recognized that anyone this naïve, giddy and ‘Burn After Reading’-level stupid would make a rather poor espionage partner.”

Burn After Reading was alert to how the end of the Cold War changed the dynamics of treason. “Government service is not the same as when you were in State,” the main character, former CIA analyst Osbourne Cox, tells his senile father. “Things are different now. I don’t know, maybe it’s the Cold War ending.” Cox, played with malevolent glee by John Malkovich, is a spy of the old school: a decrepit Princeton prig who worships George Kennan. It’s not only Cox’s alcoholism that causes him to be cashiered by the agency, but his antiquated establishment hauteur. He finds his nemeses in Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) and Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), two exceptionally dopey employees of a gym called Hardbodies who accidentally acquire a compact disc containing drafts of Cox’s barely coherent memoir. Thinking they’ve found something valuable—“secret spy shit”—the simpleminded duo tries to leverage the CD for cash, first from Cox and then from the Russian embassy. Their motives are petty: the aging but spunky Litzke wants money for plastic surgery, and her goofball buddy is all too eager to help. Dumbfounded when Litzke and Feldheimer present them with this unexpected but also worthless gift, the Russians determine that these would-be traitors are, as one embassy worker says, “not ideological.”