The Borderlands of Thistledom is a gargantuan, safe nation, ruled by Thistle with an iron fist, and notable for its smutty television, public floggings, and suspicion of poets. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, humorless population of 40.979 billion Thistledoms are ruled with an iron fist by the corrupt, dictatorship government, which oppresses anyone who isn't on the board of a Fortune 500 company. Large corporations tend to be above the law, and use their financial clout to gain ever-increasing government benefits at the expense of the poor and unemployed.

The relatively small, corrupt, moralistic, well-organized government prioritizes Law & Order, with Defense and Healthcare also on the agenda, while Welfare and Spirituality are ignored. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of New London. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 5.6%.

The frighteningly efficient Thistledom economy, worth an astonishing 10,428 trillion euros a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Retail, Uranium Mining, and Woodchip Exports. Black market activity is frequent. Average income is an amazing 254,473 euros, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 908,769 per year while the poor average 51,204, a ratio of 17.7 to 1.

Peace talks occasionally rack up a higher body count than the wars they seek to stop, there's an aura of pseudoscience around academia, aeroplane cockpits no longer have altimeters or airspeed indicators, and airlines are reporting record profits from their new 'bread and water' service. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force. Thistledom's national animal is the lynx, which is also the nation's favorite main course.

Thistledom is ranked 282,636^th in the world and 23^rd in Haiku for Most Primitive, scoring -484.83 on the Scary Big Number Scale.