Is Cancel Culture Fundamentally Religious?

There was a time, when the Catholic Church ruled Europe, through threat of excommunication.  As time passed, and Europe became more enlightened, the Catholic Church lost most of its power, and individual countries chose their own religions.  Within each country, the state religion (or "establishment") was legally enforced to different degrees.  Even in the most free countries, there were penalties for adhering to beliefs and values opposed to those of the established religion, including losing your job and not being eligible for employment.  In the least free countries, you would just be killed for adherence to beliefs opposed to the established religion.  Over time, culture continued to evolve, and many countries began to tolerate other religions, so long as they were not too loud.  Religions that were not the national establishment did not necessarily have to hide, but if they started proselyting or causing any sort of unrest, members would often still be slaughtered or at least imprisoned, and even if they were not causing problems, it was often hard for them to find employment.  Once immigration to the Americas become feasible, culture was allowed to progress again, as many anti-establishment people immigrated to the Americas in search of religious freedom.  Despite the religious freedom in the Americas though, there were still problems with religious tolerance.  Now that there was an option for people to practice their beliefs without the oppression of religious establishment, many of the religious groups developed their own forms of punishment and intolerance for outside beliefs.  The foundation of the U.S. government put a stop to religious cities, where the local government would discriminate against people who were not of the primary religion in the city.  Religious freedom was Constitutionally protected, and for the most part, all governments complied.  This did not end religious intolerance though.

In the U.S. until fairly recently, a lot of religions practiced "public shaming" and ostracism of members that did not adhere to the standards of the religion.  This still happens in some isolated religious communities, notably including some Amish communities.  There are also reports of public shaming and ostracism in some Jehovah's Witness congregations, though it is not clear how widespread this is.  For the most part though, public shaming and ostracism as a form of religious punishment has become very uncommon, as humanity and U.S. culture have become more civilized.

Unfortunately, it looks like the less religious left never got the memo, that public shaming and ostracism are uncivilized and completely inappropriate punishments.  In fact, public shaming as a punishment for actual crime was abolished in the U.S. in 1905.  The pillory was a device used to subject the victim to public shaming.  Most of the U.S. outlawed the use of the pillory in the mid-1800s, acknowledging that public shaming qualified as cruel and usual punishment.  Delaware continued using the pillory until 1901 and finally outlawed it in 1905.  A hundred years after every U.S. state acknowledged that public shaming was similar enough to torture to outlaw its use as judicial punishment for serious crimes, many people on the left decided it was appropriate to revive it for use against people who merely had different opinions from their own.

Let's be clear: Cancel Culture is a religion.  It is a religion that publicly shames and ostracizes people who violate its beliefs.  It is a religion that is lobbying the government to make it the established religion of the United States.  Because it is not a registered religion and does not have any specific beliefs regarding deity, it is easy to overlook this fact, but the fact is, Cancel Culture is a religious movement that uses practices generally agreed upon for almost a century as morally corrupt to punish people who disagree with its beliefs.  Cancel Culture is a religion stuck in the 1950s and earlier, that is intolerant of beliefs that are not its own, and that has taken the abominable practices of public shaming and ostracism outside of its own congregations.  Cancel Culture is not only like 1800s to mid-1900s religions that used these disgusting forms of punishments against their own members.  It has reverted to practices used by dominant religions before the founding of the U.S., that punished anyone in their territory with these torturous punishments who disagreed with their beliefs, regardless of membership.  Cancel Culture has reverted to cruel punishments used by corrupt and intolerant religions over 230 years ago.

How can civilization revert by over 200 years in only two decades?  Simple, and bunch of self righteous tyrants take it upon themselves to abuse the power they have gained through social media to trample democracy and punish those who are guilty only of disagreeing with them.