The Republic of Giroux is a titanic, socially progressive nation, ruled by Claude Giroux with a fair hand, and remarkable for its rum-swilling pirates, museums and concert halls, and free-roaming dinosaurs. The hard-nosed, hard-working, democratic population of 13.288 billion Girouxians are effectively ruled by a group of massive corporations, who run for political office and provide their well-off citizens with world-class goods and services. Their poorer citizens, however, are mostly starving to death while being urged to go out and get real jobs. The populace has reasonably extensive civil rights, although these are mostly aimed at allowing them to buy whatever they like.

The relatively small government juggles the competing demands of Administration, Education, and Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Flyer City. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 13.5%.

The all-consuming Girouxian economy, worth a remarkable 1,297 trillion Sliding Dollars a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Arms Manufacturing industry, with major contributions from Retail, Basket Weaving, and Book Publishing. Average income is 97,629 Sliding Dollars, with the richest citizens earning 5.7 times as much as the poorest.

Children must make a homemade spinach and ricotta rotolo by high school or be held back, Girouxian doors require a Ph.D. to open, Flyer City University is said to be the modern-day Tower of Babel, and women wear burqas to avoid unwanted male attention. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown. Giroux's national animal is the Gritty, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its national religion is The Orange Order.

Giroux is ranked 85,310^th in the world and 6^th in The Slide Countries for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 112.18 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.