After 20 minutes of reading, I'm even more convinced of what my intuition said earlier this morning: the civil rights situation throughout large portions of Europe is much worse than it is in the US. Compare the first N articles of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic to the Bill of Rights. Then read about the "sect filters" the German government(!) drafted to enable employers to deny jobs to people in a disfavored religion.
* The US is a lot more free on paper, but has very little liberty in practice.
Germany is, in theory, a lot less free - however I have never been anywhere else that allows many of the sorts of things that are commonplace here.*
I have a similar understanding of China, based on several limited visits and conversations with extended family and friends there. They've got a lot of restriction in theory, but in practice, as long as you leave the oligarchy alone, they keep to themselves and ignore you.
Given your comments about starting a violent revolution I guess it's not too surprising you moved to the one country that tried twice in the last 100 years to take over the world.