Having grown up with TNG my impression of the Federation was much like what the US was pretending to be prior to 9/11 (i.e. prior to "world police"), a beacon of liberty, equality and hope for mankind, but with all the ills of real-world USA eliminated by scientific progress and a more idealistic and altruistic society.
The show had a few militaristic undertones initially but they mostly went away in season 2 and later, except for the ranks. The ranks and offensive capabilities are lampshaded a number of times but Picard and other characters frequently prove that those are just born out of necessity and for self-defense, never to attack. The Borg represent such a threat exactly because they are not interested in diplomacy and Starfleet has to fight an all-out war to survive them -- unlike the Romulans or Klingons who even at the worst of times mostly didn't outright attack them.
I love Star Trek but one person's utopia is another person's dystopia, it's just a matter of perspective.
And as far as technology goes, the original series predicted a couple of things, and we got a Space Shuttle named after the Enterprise, but most of it is magic and therefore useless to the real world. No matter how hard we work or how much we believe in ourselves we're never getting matter replication or transporters or holodecks that will create sentient life on command.
We could look at the ideals of Star Trek, but remember that what we see is quasi-militaristic, autocratic and there is no real sign anywhere of privacy or freedom from the surveillance infrastructure of the computer. Even the transporters keep copies of people's entire genetic code.