Hakos Pervanidis asked Dave Mustaine, on Metal Hammer Greece's programme TV War, whether the present climate still lets him say what he thinks the way he could forty years ago. The answer was no, and the reasoning was arithmetic rather than grievance.
“If you sing about politics, for example, and somebody can determine where your political leanings lie, you've just halved your audience, because the people who are one party will be for you, and the other party will be against you,” he said. “And that really sucks. Before, it used to be nobody knew who you voted for. Nobody cared.”
He put the rest more sharply. The world has changed for the worse, he said, with the cancelling and the hatred, and in the United States you can no longer say things unless you are one of the people telling everyone else what they cannot say. What he objects to most is the exposure: that it now matters to some people to find out how a person voted and to publish it.
He does not believe that describes the Megadeth audience. He came from a bad start, he said, everything since has been an attempt to make himself better, and he has put all of it in front of the people who listen so that they can do the same.