This election has been a nightmare that ended in another nightmare. Donald Trump is going to be the President of the United States. As hundreds of news articleshave hammered home, this is bad news.

Since late March, writers for the website Slate have written a series of articles called the "Trump Apocalypse Watch." They covered election news events and included "a subjective daily estimate, using a scale of one to four horsemen, of how likely it was that Donald Trump would be elected president, thus triggering an apocalypse in which we all die." Here is their rating from the last article in the series.

However, not all is despair. Contrary to this legitimate concern joke by the Slate writers, the election of Donald Trump will not lead to the end of the world as we know it for at least five reasons:

1. Trump is backing down on some of his insane proposals.

During the campaign season, Donald Trump became widely known for a number of insane policies and actions which he passionately supported. The most famous was probably his idea, based on unfounded fears about illegal immigration, to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. His other crazy suggestions include jailing Hillary Clinton, banning Muslim immigrants, repealing Obamacare and "unraveling" the NAFTA and TPP trade deals.

After having a chat with President Obama and realizing what it would take to actually do those crazy things, however, Trump is taking a more moderate position.

Trump is now saying that he will probably not repeal Obamacare, make Mexico pay for his border wall or put Hillary Clinton in jail. He has likewise backed down on several other key areas, or at least he seems to be softening up his stance, with many of his advisors referring to his promises on the campaign trail as just "campaign talk."

2. Trump's voter base is rapidly shrinking.

Surprising no one, Trump found the most support among old, uneducated, white Republicans. It may be a bit more surprising that he found so much support among Christians, considering the complete lack of overlap between Christian values and anything Donald Trump has ever said or done, but it appears that Christians decided to prioritize politics over religion in this case.

Anyways, the people in all of those categories right now will make up a rapidly shrinking proportion of the electorate in the future. First of all, while this feels somewhat morbid to point out, the older people who voted for Trump will not be around anywhere near as long as the Millennials who voted for Hillary. Regarding the other categories, Americans are becoming more educated, racially diverse, religiously unaffiliated rather than Christian and politically liberal as time moves on. They are also becoming more intelligent, which will hopefully prevent another irrational choice like Trump in the future.

Trump may have found plenty of support in the traditional American market of old, uneducated, white Christians, but those who follow him would increasingly struggle to win by relying on the same voter base.

3. Political satirists will have more material.

Late-night comedy show hosts such as Trevor Noah, Jon Oliver and (my personal favorite) Stephen Colbert have drawn most of their material from the election over the past year, primarily by poking fun at Trump's absurd persona, policies, and gaffs.

If there is a bright side to having an impulsive and fiery motor-mouth in the Oval Office, it is that these comedians will still have plenty of material to use in their routines. We may see a phenomenon similar to Jon Stewart – and Colbert as well – in their heyday during the Bush administration. Even if the country is burning to the ground, at least we will be able to laugh about it.

4. We don't have to hear about the election being "rigged."

Trump and his supporters have complained quite a bit in the past about the election being "rigged" against him:

Dead Democrats who “absolutely vote.” “Phony” polling and the colluding media “refusing” to report on his imminent victory. Paul Ryan’s backstabbing “months-long campaign” to get Hillary Clinton elected president. Donald Trump and his supporters keep adding to their list of the dubious ways they’ve been boxed out from winning the White House.

However, now that he has won, they are unlikely to focus on the problems with the election. Any claim that the system is "rigged" will suddenly backfire by implying that Trump's election was a fraud!

5. Problems in the political system have been exposed.

While Trump is an authoritarian, scandal-prone, offensive, racist, narcissistic jerk who whines too much, he actually did have a good point about the system being "rigged." Arguably, the best thing to come out of his coronation election is that he appears to have single-handedly broken the political machine:

Trump ran against the most well-funded, well-organized political machine in the history of national politics, with 90 percent of the media and celebrities standing against him. All of the systems that are supposed to make sure one side wins failed. He smashed a billion-dollar political machine to pieces. Good. I'm glad we can have elections where the prize doesn't go to the side with the slickest ads, biggest names, and deepest pockets. So be it.

I personally do not think it was worth the consequences for corrupt political institutions to get a shocking wake-up call, but at least that is one benefit.

While less obvious, another problem with the political system has been laid bare before the country: the electoral college is undemocratic. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. I will repeat: more Americans voted for Clinton than Trump – by "a healthy margin of over 630,000 votes" as of November 13. In the words of Star Trek actor George Takei, "The people elected Hillary [but] the system elected Donald." The irony of the "insider" candidate winning the popular vote while the "outsider" candidate won the votes of the arbitrary system should be noted.

I may discuss more in-depth why the Electoral College is problematic in a future article, but this election has made its biggest problem very in-your-face: if the election was democratic, Trump would have lost. In this case, I actually agree with Trump's reasoning (but not his spelling) as he described it in 2012:

He ended up deleting that tweet, probably because of the spelling error, so here is another won one:

The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012

Change.org actually launched a petiton with over 4 million supporters calling on members of the Electoral College to follow the preferences of the people and make Clinton president, which would be technically legal even though it has never happened before in large numbers. Full disclosure: I signed the petition.

By pointing out these five things, I am not saying that the situation of the United States will necessarily improve over the next four years. The Trump administration (that was a difficult phrase to type) could easily do a lot of damage. But all hope is not lost, and there will be chances for future Americans to undo the damage and correct our mistake.