Star Trek is fiction, a hopeful vision of a far future and not a description of the present. ToS was also
dark and verging on a horror series most of the time. The rampant optimism of the 1990's and TnG are NOT found in ToS. The Federation of ToS isn't a utopia or implied to be one, it's just
more egalitarian than the present at the time which was defined by generational, racial, and economic fighting. It took place during the context of a war that claimed tens of thousands of American lives, most drafted from the ranks of our youth.
It's very easy to imagine a past defined by fictional narratives and idealized memories of the Cold War. Don't give in to nostalgia, it's a lie.