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This is in part why I believe the doctrine of rapture and other forms of divine protection from the tribulation to be a flawed interpretation of scripture.

When large scale persecution of Christians has been present since the beginning, why should an American Christian feel that somehow they won't have to face this?

It's the difference between historical persecution and martyrdom at various times and in various isolated locales, and a systematic, worldwide attempt to identify and destroy all believers. I've never been able to bring myself to accept a belief that Christians will completely escape Tribulation, persecution and martyrdom in the last days, but there is clear scriptural support for the Church being removed rather than destroyed, leaving an unbelieving world to turn its wrath solely upon Israel. As a result, I won't claim to know at all when believers will be removed, caught up, “raptured,” but indeed they/we will. It would be nice if this were to occur prior to Tribulation and I hope they're right, but it appears to me that persecution and martyrdom will occur before the Church is removed by God.

Actually, rather than escape, “For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? “ (1 Peter 4:17)

What i see the Scriptures collectively teaching is that the Lord’s return is the “day of Christ,” and is the first resurrection the “resurrection of the just,” “the resurrection of life,” (Jn. 5:28,29; cf. Lk. 14:14; Acts 24:15) which “gathering together unto him” will not occur until “there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. “ (2 Thessalonians 2:3,4)

And which is when living believers meet the Lord in the air, and henceforth shall “ever be with the Lord,” and thus shall go with Him to the battle of Armageddon, and afterwards face the judgment seat of Christ, with believers being rewarded or suffering disapproval and loss according to how they built His church, but being saved despite this, as well as sitting in judgment of the lost at the resurrection of the unjust. (1 Corinthians 3:8ff; 6:2)