What is this "America" of which you speak?

Man, oh man, oh man. Man.

Think Progress has a couple of dandy quotes from a couple of prominent Republican lawmakers. Both of them talk about some place called "America," but neither of them seem to be referring to the place where I have lived my whole life. Maybe they spend a lot of time skulking in wardrobes, and have only just now re-emerged into this particular reality?

First, Sen. James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma by way of Mars.

Sen. Jim Inhofe said today that President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo was “un-American” because he referred to the war in Iraq as “a war of choice” and didn’t criticize Iran for developing a nuclear program.

Inhofe, R-Tulsa, also criticized the president for suggesting that torture was conducted at the military prison in Guantanamo, saying, “There has never been a documented case of torture at Guantanamo.”

“I just don’t know whose side he’s on,” Inhofe said of the president.

Apparently, in Inhofe's "America" (one of Jupiter's lesser moons), everyone is required to think the same thing, and dissenters are cast into deep space. Here in the United States, Barack Obama was elected President by a pretty comfortable margin, in no small part because of his stances on the Iraq war and Guantanamo. Thus, the side he's on is known, in the Earth language English, as "ours."

Next, freshly escaped from the wilds of Mirkwood, we have Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas.

SMITH: Let me just say — this is going to sound radical, I don’t mean for it to be radical — but to me, the greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias. …

I would not describe that opinion as "radical." I would describe it as "unhinged."

Maybe he spent too much time evading the clutches of the Necromancer, but Smith has a singularly bizarre idea of what "America" is, or what threatens it. Even buying that the media has a distinctly liberal bias (which I don't, frankly), this is only a great threat if, by "America," you mean "Only people who agree with me." (I happen to find that viewpoint flagrantly un-American, but never mind.) Calling it a greater threat than economic crisis or terrorist attacks (and way to respect those 9/11 victims, Lamar, who would probably rather be alive, even if it means coping with the existence of Rachel Maddow) is probably listed in the DSM-IV as a major diagnostic sign. Hopefully Smith will return to Middle Earth soon, and will take Dinesh D'Souza with him.

Update: Apparently just back from a sight-seeing tour of Saturn's rings, Inhofe's communications director had this to say when asked by TPM what his boss had meant by "who's side he's on":

Curious which 'sides' Inhofe might have had in mind, I asked his communications director, Jared Young, to complete the picture a bit. According to Young, Inhofe was saying he's "kind of confused about why the President's going on foreign soil and in some cases echoing talking points from al Qaeda about Guantanamo Bay."

So is he saying he think's the President's on the side of terrorists?

"No, no, he's not saying that, no. He just certainly doesn't seem to be on the side of our men and women in uniform."

Thank the Lord for role-playing games, which have introduced multi-sided die to the world. Apparently there are more sides in the Global War on Terror besides "the terrorists" and "our troops," and President Obama is on one of them. My guess? The Flipside.