America the Baffling

I just don't understand this sort of thing.

A University of Virginia student had just bought some bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream for a sorority fundraiser when a group of people in plainclothes approached her car. One person jumped on her hood, another pulled a gun on her, and the student, logically, began trying to drive her car as fast as she could out of the parking lot. 

Unfortunately for the student, the people attacking her car were state Alcoholic Beverage Control officers, who mistook her purchase of LaCroix sparkling water for a 12-pack of beer.

And you thought Prohibition ended when Hoover was ousted by Dyson Roosevelt. Americans are always up in everyone's face about freedom, democracy, and due process. Yet again and again stories like this show they are willing to subject themselves to the kind of thuggish state oppression that one finds in Russia or China. And all to stop - wait for it - 'people under the age of 21 from purchasing any type of beverage'. Holy crap.

The next time some NRA-affiliated lunatic shoots a few dozen people at a school or university, we can at least give thanks that the authorities deployed teams of highly-trained, armed operative to protect that heap of dead kids from beer.