Bill the Butcher is the famously vicious patriot and xenophobe from the film The Gangs of New York. Beautifully and horrifically captured by none other than the uniquely talented Daniel Day-Lewis, Bill was a racist gang leader who found respect only in men with a penchant for violence as developed as his own. The character is darkly charismatic, with his disdain for ‘lukewarm’ followers or fair-weather friends speaking to our own desire for loyalty or relationships that lack passion or intensity. Sometimes we all crave the fantasy of someone so deeply committed they would be willing to give their life for a cause. Even if that cause was a trivial as us.

No, Bill the Butcher is not a man who lacks passion, or conviction for that matter, going ‘all-in’ in every scene, the threat of explosive violence a constant source of tension. His death comes as a cleansing of sorts, a respected old friend re-introduced by a worthy adversary perhaps.

What a villain such as this can teach us is that while passion is admirable and what we are initially drawn to, that zealotry can be the ruin of the cause and the person. A contagion we can’t afford to spread. The riots of Jan. 6th and the riots after the murder of George Floyd are excellent examples of regular people being driven to unscrupulous ends by the impassioned plea for ‘rightness’ in a world that is never so black and white. That succumbing to violence should be seen as degrading to the reasoned mind is lost on the self-righteous. That the ever-present threat of an eager movement to engulf the rational majority in a maelstrom of misinformation and overwhelming emotion is the painting that is Bill the Butcher. Staring back at us as we stare at him, both longing for the other to yield enough to solve the problem, both refusing to do so rather than ‘lose’.