Surprise Racism

So thanks to the limits of health insurance, despite not being better, today was my last day of physical therapy. This meant that aside from getting a massage and electrode-therapy for my neck and shoulder, I also got to have another on-on-one evaluation with the therapist.

She is a middle-aged woman, one of the only American-born, English-speaking people employed there. None of which is important until a little later in the story.

She and I see eye to eye on a lot in regards to her place of employment. On any given day she is having a bad day due to the general rudeness of the secretarial staff she has to put up with. Mostly, they seem to treat her poorly because she does not speak Russian and they feel that she should. This bothers her because we're in America and she's an American -- why should she be expected to learn Russian? Kind of understandable. It also bothers her because she's a DOCTOR and they're fucking secretaries.

Now, at no point does she imply that all Russians are assholes, otherwise I wouldn't agree with the sentiment at all. It's specifically the people she works with who are assholes and they just happen to be Russian.

Every time I speak with her, we discuss the inefficiency and poor behavior of the staff. For instance, how when I needed my medication refilled, they put me on hold for over two hours and then never bothered picking up the line again. How I had to go through withdrawal not once, but twice due to the complete incompetency of the secretarial staff to do their job properly. Inexcusable really when your job consists of: answer the phone and pass on messages. In this case they were wholly incapable of accepting the fax from the pharmacy and giving it to my doctor to reauthorize the refill and fax back. They didn't even have to use their mouth-holes. They just had to pick up a piece of paper and hand it to someone else.

I guess this understanding between her and I lead her to some sense of comradery with me that I honestly would've rather avoided. Since it wound up leaving me speechless and feeling really awkward. Basically what happened is we went from casually lamenting the terrible work ethic of the office staff, to me uncomfortably nodding to a remarkably racist rant, culminating in her proclamation that she'd be voting for Santorum.

So what exactly did she say? Paraphrasing here, because it makes me feel dirty... her first issue was that we've got a black president who wants to turn America into a black country. Whatever the hell that even means. A country where she, a white woman, would be paying health insurance on top of taxes for the have-nots. I'm not sure where she got the idea that "Obamacare" would force her to not only continue paying her personal health insurance premium but mine and everyone else's too AND higher taxes came from, but this is what she thought. And if this is what people think then I can now understand why so many people are so adamantly opposed: they're flipping idiots.

She then went on to say that we'll be in another war soon because America is controlled by Jews and the Jews of Israel are appealing to us for help with Iran right now, despite the fact that they can handle that shit themselves because they have about two dozen nuclear warheads of their own. Her words, not mine. Jews are warmongers who're about to ruin the world. This very evening by the sound of her concern. There are quite a few issues I take with this, aside from the racism. Primarily that she thinks a country should solve their disputes with nuclear warfare rather than asking for help. If that's how the people of the world solved all their problems, there wouldn't be any people of the world.

She then proceeds to place all of her faith in Santorum to fix things. The whole time I'm just smiling and nodding because I'm so flabbergasted by the surprise racism that I don't know what the shit else to do. Not that I was afraid to stand up and oppose her blatantly racist remarks, but I was just so completely shocked to be hearing them in the first place I was stunned into silence. It's honestly one of the weirdest situations I've ever found myself in the middle of, and that is saying a lot.

No, man! We are not racist BFF's. I just think the staff in your office are douchebags. Why are you telling me all this crap?