It is a Saturday night, less than twenty-four hours before a football match between Bulgaria’s two most culturally opposing teams. The question “Do you support CSKA or Levski?” had been the most wildly divisive distinction between Bulgarian football fans, in retrospect uncomfortably akin to the fight between Democrats and Republicans in the United States.

My family is having dinner at my aunt’s place with her family, and a discussion jokingly arises. I am not much of a football fan, and my understanding of the sport is laughably superficial, not going beyond the aforementioned clash between the two teams’ fans.

“Do you support CSKA or Levski?“ I ask my uncle.

“CSKA,” he answers. But then adds: “As does Ryan. Yet, for some unknown reason, Liam seems to support Levski.”

Liam and Ryan are his two sons, whose names have been changed to Western ones to protect their identities. They are twins in a very familiar fight to distinguish themselves from each other.

His response irks me for reasons unbeknownst to me. How could he so obviously give one of his sons the upper hand in their little battle? I respect Ryan’s choice – to me, it means little more than nothing. It was not really about football, and to this day I suspect the following: Ryan chose a team to win his father’s favor. Liam chose the other to make himself different.

Football is a sport. Being part of some team’s fanbase is often nothing more than competitive differentiation: Us vs Them. This is the point of sports: they are fun, preaching the law of sportsmanship as the practice of disagreeing with others but not disrespecting them. Yet, after reading the recent election results, I could not help but think about this suppressed memory from many years ago.

Is politics a sport?

The rabbit hole goes so much deeper. Only from listening to the people around me–my family, friends, strangers on the street, television hosts– did I question what being politically active means today. Was voting a means to better our livelihoods and decide what is best for all of us, or was it a way to ensure that others have it worse?

It is a sickening thought.

To quote Stanislav Stratiev, a Bulgarian playwright and screenwriter:

“The Bulgarian model is not for me to be well, but for you to be worse.”

For decades writers have shed light on this phenomenon of wanting life for others to be worse, a macabre cultural disdain towards the fortune and livelihood of neighbors, political groups, and societal classes. It is not at its core a matter of wealth. Those familiar with the history of Bulgaria know that most of its citizens were as poor as church mice for centuries.

It is a matter of sport, weaponized contempt towards others. In the case of politics, this turns out to not only be weaponized contempt, but regulated and government-mandated political contempt at that. It seems this has escaped the border of Bulgaria – I see it in the results of the U.S. elections.

I am not American. I am a Bulgarian citizen who despises the political culture of her people. I can only give a good example of the weaponization of politics in Bulgaria. My brother talks about voting for our country’s Democrat analog in an effort to cancel out my uncle’s vote for the Bulgarian version of the Republican party.

My uncle announces at the family gathering that he supports people from ethnic and gender minorities and then proceeds to (not so) selectively vote for the party that aims to dehumanize them.

My father, having a representative of said minorities as his daughter, refuses to share whom he voted for.

My mother makes it a point to ask me personally whom she should vote for.

There is no point in hiding it anymore – politics is a sport. It is a sport of one part bettering one’s own standard of living and three parts of establishing dominance over one’s acquaintances. Politics is a sport of hatred.

Once a football match ends, all fans go home to their families, as if the game was just a fleeting moment of the past. Once an election ends, the results last for years.

I do have to give the sport of politics credit for one thing, though: just as the only people making money within the confines of a football match are the players, so are politicians the only ones making money off elections. Politics fits the definition of a sport well.

Some use politics in the way they were meant to in the first place: to decide what is best for everybody. To those who do, you have my admiration and my gratitude. Then, some care little for the consequences of their actions when they can have a momentary “win” over the other side. Is politics a sport to strategically divide us?

Of course, it is. All sports are, eventually. There has to be a winner and a loser, right? This is true even in Bulgaria, where there is a vast multitude of parties who share the votes of the electorate, and even more so in the plurality voting system of the U.S., where there are only winners and losers.

Once again quoting Stanislav Stratiev, “The Bulgarian model is indestructible. All of us moving to Canada would be its end. As would it be for Canada.”

Stanislav Stratiev has long since passed away, so I will take the perhaps narcissistic freedom to speak on his behalf, and everyone who shares his beliefs:

It’s clear the Bulgarian model has moved to the U.S. Perhaps it has always been a part of it. As a Bulgarian, I have no right to decide what the United States model is. All I can say is that I have observed it, and what I have discovered I am afraid of.

"If we have given something to the world — it is the Bulgarian model. It is, like the Pyramid of Cheops or the Tower of Babel, our contribution to the treasury of humanity."