You're mentioning you're upper middle class...middle class doesn't exist anymore, you're a peasant like the rest of us.
You're right on the other hand about living in rural areas. I moved with my wife and kids from a big city 7 years ago to a small village and never regretted that decision.
100% agree with that. It's an outdated reference, like class and norms.
I'm familiar with the European beauracracy. It's not good either, but it seems to cut across a different part of the social infrastructure. It's a big bother, makes everything very difficult (like starting a business), but it's also tuned towards dealing with the melting pot-ness of the European identity issue. There are serious national and cultural stratifications across Europe that keep people really divided. There's no "us" and hasn't been for a long time.
Our nominal "us"-ness is now eating itself... "American dream" and "American novel" are both concepts that would mean very little to millenials, and those coming up younger.
I think what I find most tragic about what feels like the American mindset right now is how much it's ignoring how good we still have it, and how much better things could still be if there was a true interest in the greater good. We still don't have some of the really unsolvable problems that other countries contend with. Our perspective is blinding.