The Holy Empire of Selmistan is a huge, cultured nation, notable for its frequent executions, public floggings, and stringent health and safety legislation. The cynical population of 660 million Selmistanians are ruled without fear or favor by a psychotic dictator, who outlaws just about everything and refers to the populace as "my little playthings."

The large, moralistic, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Education, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Selmapolis. The average income tax rate is 67.4%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The sizeable but inefficient Selmistanian economy, worth 33.2 trillion Francs a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is quite specialized, is led by the Tourism industry, with significant contributions from Book Publishing, Information Technology, and Beef-Based Agriculture. Average income is 50,244 Francs, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Charged suspects often have to wait years before the courts have room to judge their trial, scientists recently cloned the long-extinct feather-bellied cow, nobody knows why the caged cow sings, and relations with Dàguó have warmed from frosty to chilly. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Selmistan's national animal is the cow, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Selmistan is ranked 30,754^th in the world and 1,757^th in Lazarus for Most Cultured, scoring 80 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.