Be angry but sin not

Green: [laughs] Okay, this will be the second-to-last question then. It seems like one of the upshots of your book is that everyone is pissed about America right now.

Lenz: Yeah. Everyone’s pissed.

Green: What should we do about that?

Lenz: Well, here’s the thing: Anger is a normal, natural human emotion. I don’t think we have to be afraid of anger. We should be angry! The more we try to ignore it, or tell some people that they don’t have a right to be angry, the worse it gets.

I tell my children, “You’re allowed to be angry, but you can’t hurt people with your anger.” That’s the trick, right? People are allowed to be angry, and we should hear them out. But when that anger starts hurting people, that’s when you’ve got to shut it down.

Emma Green, Rural White Voters May Decide 2020, described more revealingly as “A candid conversation with the Iowa-based writer and thinker Lyz Lenz, who believes that meeting your neighbor is the only solution.”