Supporters of the Soviets were keen on moral equivalency.
Imagine if that was done with Nazis. "Petty things like the difference between people who burn others in ovens, and people who don't, don't matter".
I think that the quote means "petty things like who stepped out of the spaceship first don't matter", not "petty things like the difference between us and those capitalist pigs don't matter".
It's also true that the line between "American" and "Soviet" (or, for that matter, between "American" and "1940s German") is not drawn in remotely the same way as the line between "burns others in ovens" and "doesn't": it is mainly indicative of which part of the world you were born in. I have much greater sympathy for moral equivalency in the first case than in the second.
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: