Well, it’s Veteran’s Day 2026, and Fingers is pleased to report that the beverage-alcohol industry’s relationship to the American war machine is very normal and cool. Haha just kidding, it’s more insane than ever before.

Joining The Fingers Podcast today for a holiday bonus episode on the sad state of the spirits’ trade’s martial marketing is Kelsey D. Atherton, the editor of the Center for International Policy’s International Policy Journal and the boozeletter’s longtime go-to expert for matters of military-industrial inebriation. It was with Kelsey, who was then publishing the independent newsletter Wars of Future Past, that I wrote “Whiskey For Troops™️,” the instant reader-favorite special edition of Fingers first published for Veterans Day 2023. On this episode, we talked about how war-themed booze marketing is corny on its own merit—and more insidiously, how it helps to normalize America’s deeply abnormal politics and culture of war into something that can be bought, sold, and even celebrated. Tune in.