False equivalence has always been the rhetorical weapon of choice for the American far left. If Stalin had gulags, well, what about our Jim Crow laws? If the Soviets intervened to crush rebellions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, what about Iran, or Chile, or a host of others? If the Russians had the KGB, what about J. Edgar Hoover? And so on.
Oliver Stone is the proud heir to this intellectual tradition. It is clearly his objective to destroy our illusions about American ideals and the rule of law and expose our society for what he thinks it is: a neo-fascist state based, not on democracy and law, but on money and power.
The interesting thing here is that his view of America and Donald Trump’s have much in common: hence, his Putin interviews. The difference between the two is that Trump has no objection to a Social Darwinian America (he just views it as the natural order of things), while Stone dreams of creating a purer America in which the rich and powerful finally receive their just desserts. Good luck with that.