Many American television shows set thousands of years in the future seem to assume that America will still exist then (Status Quo Is Good). While we don't even know if our species will propogate that long, it is hard to imagine that America will necessarily thrive for many millenia, and if it does, it most likely will be a very different America than the one we recognize today.

Shows (especially comical ones like Futurama and Family Guy) make loads of predictions, which may even prove to be funnier in hindsight, when those predictions prove themselves wrong or right.

I know that we can't act as a crystal ball in explaining this trope (we'd have to march on every future political example in media and entertainment), but I feel that it definitely deserves a blanket mention that any show that predicts the outcome of certain events COULD become examples of this trope.

Scrapped reference to missile defense being a "pipe dream" since the system is at least partly operational.