Well for one the Tor developers say to let Tor pick your nodes for you, so I think they probably know what they are talking about. For two if you pick your own nodes you will stick out from the crowd since the vast majority of people don't pick their own Tor nodes. And for three, USA has less strict data retention laws than almost all of EU and also NSA logs ALL traffic into or out of the USA but log much less intra-USA traffic (since they carry out their logging at IX's and not AS's). What is the logic behind avoiding USA nodes? You know the feds are not limited to running Tor nodes in USA right? Please explain your logic so I can give a more thorough explanation of why you are wrong, but I already am quite certain that you will not convince me that I am wrong .