All Bandcamp profits from "This Is A Test" will be donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center. (www.splcenter.org)

I wrote this song a couple of years ago. It's about Lee Atwater. It's entirely possible you've never heard of Lee Atwater, but I guarantee that you know his work. He's essentially the reason Trump was elected, which is pretty impressive considering how Lee's been dead since 1991.

Long story short, Lee Atwater: former RNC chairman, campaign manager for Pres. George Bush, official "dirty tricks" man for Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign. Ever see those racially charged, dog-whistle negative ads from the '88 campaign? The one that tied murderer/rapist Willie Horton to Mike Dukakis? The one that featured a "revolving door" of criminals (referring to a prison furlough program Dukakis didn't even implement)? That was Lee Atwater. Crazy thing is, when he was done crafting political ads that played to people's nastiest and most hateful instincts, he'd head off to the Blues Bar and play guitar with his African-American buddies. He wasn't personally racist, but he was very, very comfortable using other people's racism for political gain, which isn't much better. In fact, considering the lasting impact he seems to have had on the American right-wing, it's a lot worse. If Trump won (in part) because of white resentment, it's only because the GOP's never quite been able to shake off Atwater's influence. (Remember how McCain lost South Carolina in 2000 because of a rumor about his "secret black daughter"? That was Karl Rove, following Atwater's playbook to the letter.)

And yeah, he's this hot sauce lovin', brash, cruel prankster good old boy who spent his whole political career trolling people before trolling was even a thing, and he won damn near every time... until he died of a brain tumor at age 40.

He's giving a speech in DC. He's telling a joke about how he edited the commercial with Mike Dukakis riding the tank in such a way that the Duke looked like Rocky The Flying Squirrel, and... he drops to the floor. In the ambulance, he has a vision. It's a convention hall, balloons, bunting, the whole thing. The banner above the stage reads... "THIS IS A TEST."

Lee finds religion real quick. He converts to Catholicism. He apologizes to everyone he's ever hurt or lied about, admits to producing those racist negative ads in 1988, gives a series of interviews talking about how terrible a person he was and how destructive he knows his actions were. When he passes away, the Republican party realizes the error of their ways ha ha no they don't, they basically just keep repeating Lee's strategy over and over. And that's how you get Trump.

So. A couple years ago, I wrote this song. That's me on vocals, and guitars, and playing synth-horns, synth-organ, synth-bass, and synth-drums (Propellerhead Reason.) Now it's 2017 and this tune seems pretty goddamn relevant.

Maddy "MIDI" Myers wrote and released a protest song on her Bandcamp page called "Salt (Why Trump Won)," and she's donating the profits to charity. Awesome idea. I'm stealing it.