The UK is awful in ways that the Americans can only aspire to

Which ones are those? I struggle to come up with something that US is doing better than the UK. The whole freedom of speech issue might be the one where at least it's not that obvious, but I would argue UK is just more upfront about it, and even though more topics are explicitly forbidden in the UK, you wouldn't be dissapeared from the streets by an unmarked van about it, so I would say it's still better.