It is Day 1 of the post 2016 presidential election, and as we write this we don’t know with certainly who will be sworn in Jan. 20 as the nation’s 45th president, although we have a strong hunch. Either way, we are confident of this: The Republic will survive.

Now it could be that some Hollywood elitists are making plans for a northward sojourn to fulfill their promise should we have a Donald Trump presidency and call Canada their new home; and perhaps there are those who are planning a revolution in anticipation of Hillary Clinton coming after their guns.

But most likely, all that background noise during the nation’s most vile presidential campaign was much like what we all heard from the candidates themselves — empty promises. Has there ever been more vacuous debate?

And perhaps you can be the bigger person and send that friendship request to those whose Facebook diatribes you could stand no longer during the run-up until yesterday and who were temporarily deleted as a friend.

So why are we so sure that there is no pending doom? Because this nation, and the way our forefathers in their collective genius constructed its government, are built to last. It has given us 240 years of the world’s greatest democracy, and it will continue to do so.

We have a system of checks and balances, and even if the person living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in the nation’s capital is hauled off to prison or simply goes goofy, there remain two sane branches of government to reign them in — the legislative, including the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the judicial, which includes the Supreme Court and those lower courts beneath it.

The president of the United States is the most powerful person in the world, but he or she’s power is not limitless.

We don’t want to proclaim yesterday was without consequence. Obviously the winner will pull the country in one direction or the other, either right or left. There are aging justices on the Supreme Court, and they will be replaced with either strict constitutionalists or those who bend this nation’s laws to accommodate the times.

Although it hasn’t seemed so lately, most Americans trend toward the middle, and if the winning candidate, enabled by a friendly Congress, pulls this country too far in either direction, there are future elections during which corrections can be made.

Regardless of the outcome, we are glad today has arrived as this campaign season has brought out the worst among us — and we can only hope that both parties have learned a lesson, and they will pick their candidates more closely next time. Until that time, this nation and its potential for even more greatness endures.

Now go say hello to that former Facebook friend. It’s time for healing.