I Don't Know How You Spell A Raspberry But Consider Yourself Raspberried

It is amazing to me how, today, in the United States, someone from the biggest city in the country and holding a college degree can not possess even the dictionary skills that we were taught in 4th grade in a small, rural elementary school in a town of fewer than 2,000 residents.  Never mind a 7th grade level of sophistication in using reference materials. 

Definition of scapegoat
1 :  a goat upon whose head are symbolically placed the sins of the people after which he is sent into the wilderness in the biblical ceremony for Yom Kippur
2 a :  one that bears the blame for others
b :  one that is the object of irrational hostility

Julius Rosenberg was absolutely, clearly, guilty of the espionage he was charged with, Ethel Rosenberg is almost certain to have had knowledge of it and was found guilty of aiding him in his espionage.  Both of them could have avoided execution if he and perhaps both of them had admitted to what they were convicted of and they knew it.   They chose to not reveal if the spy network they were a part of went farther than was discovered.

They bore the blame for their own crimes.  Given that they were involved in a plot to give Stalin the bomb, there was nothing irrational about the hostility shown to them.   If they had been involved with a plot to give the bomb to Hitler no one would hold a torch for them, even if they'd been tortured before being executed.  No one seems to hold much of a torch for both the Rosenbergs and the victims of Stalin's many torture-murders.  Or did I miss that movie? 

Me, I think executing them was a. immoral because the death penalty is immoral, b. stupid because if they didn't choose to talk then, they might have chosen to talk later and more could have been learned from them.   I think it's very possible that there could have been others involved in it. c. I think both Roy Cohn and Judge Irving Kaufman had political and professional motives in playing the game of chicken with the Rosenbergs that they lost but which ended up with the Rosenbergs being given the chair.  

Julius Rosenberg had it in his power to, certainly, deal for his wife's life and likely his own.  As I pointed out yesterday, Harry Gold, who was probably a bigger fish than the Rosenbergs and David Greenglass both got out of a death penalty that way.  Given that they would have been exposing a spy network for one of the most massive and criminal dictators in history, exposing it would have been an entirely moral act.   I would certainly not fault any of those involved in ratfucking our election for Putin finking on their co-conspirators, today and that's a far cry from conspiring to give Stalin the bomb. 

It's not my fault that the legal system and culture of New York State was so full of corruption that it gave rise to a Roy Cohn, who, among his many evil and corrupt acts, was one of Donald Trump's slime ball lawyers.  Every state has them but New York is one of those places where they can really prosper.   It's also not my fault that New York gave in to Thomas Edison's anti-AC campaign and instituted state murder by electrocution.   In my little, unsophisticated, backward state we got rid of the death penalty in the 19th century.