Schaeffer,
I’m not cherry-picking at all. Part of any proper empirical analysis of anything requires that you compare like-to-like.

Macedonia and Bulgaria and Ukraine… former Soviet Union or other former backward communist states (and areas like eastern Germany) are not like to the USA and its comparables. And even now, among themselves these states have vastly differing systems. For example, the European country of Belarus is the last surviving Stalinist-style communist dictatorship. It’s included in that statistic of “Europe”.
Only the states of the former western alliance or, generally, the modern industrial capitalist liberal democracies, are what you can compare.
Of course, if you’re looking to compare the UK, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland (somewhat Spain and somewhat Greece…since they have no unbroken history since WW2 of liberal capitalist democracy), that is a proper empirical comparison. Or, if you prefer, you can just compare the US to any of the other OECD countries. There are some new ones, but their qualification for being OECD makes them somewhat comparable. Even then the US is at or near the bottom of most metrics of a well-functioning modern liberal democracy.