The U.S. House of Representatives January 6th Select Committee held its ninth (and mercifully its last) televised hearing last Thursday — 21 months after the four-hour Capitol riot that prompted it, and 25 days before the 2022 midterm elections. Timing is everything.

And it wasn’t really a hearing at all. Like its predecessors, it was a scripted, made-for-TV production, with speeches by committee members and carefully selected video snippets, broadcast simultaneously on major TV networks.

Of course, much of the media treated it as a major news event. But cutting through the breathless reportage, here’s what I think are the central takeaways:

(1.) It’s old news. Thursday’s production revealed nothing that we didn’t already know from viewing of the riot itself on 1/6/21 and the news coverage that followed in real time.

(2.) The committee’s unanimous decision to subpoena the former president is meaningless. The committee has finished its deliberations and reached its conclusions; the subpoena was just showmanship.

(3.) As in the previous televised committee meetings, the videos depicted an ugly, violent mob. We already know what ugly, violent mobs look like — we saw videos of such mobs nightly throughout the summer of 2020.

(4.) The committee’s work, its timing and its public communications have been deeply partisan from the outset, as is painfully obvious to even the most supportive observers. The sub-headline in the Washington Post’s editorial coverage on Friday morning tells the tale: “The Jan 6th Hearings are Over — Time to Vote.”

(5.) Throughout its 15 months of work, the committee has shown little interest in due process. In this supposedly rigorous proceeding intended to assign accountability for the January 6th assault (not unlike a trial), there were only prosecutors, no defense counsel, no cross-examination of witnesses, and the jury (in this case, the American public) was shown only selected parts of the evidence.

(6.) Nor was it a thorough or transparent investigation. The committee deftly ignored several key elements, including the failure by House leadership to authorize augmented protection despite multiple advance warnings of violence, the shooting by a Capitol Police Lieutenant of unarmed trespasser Ashli Babbitt, the seemingly active role by FBI informants in fomenting the riot, and the continued suppression of thousands of hours of videotape held by authorities.

(7.) Thursday’s hearing included references to “military style” assault by “heavily armed” assailants. But curiously, among the FBI’s 900-plus January 6th rioters arrested by the FBI, none has been charged with carrying firearms into the Capitol building. The only shot fired that day was by a Capitol Police officer. Does that sound like armed insurrection?

(8.) The most common feature of January 6th commentary is endless, anguished reference to the “big lie” — Donald Trump’s continued insistence that the 2020 election had been stolen, even after many had told him that it had not. But finger-wagging by the Democrats stands in sharp contrast to their convenient amnesia about their own years of insistence that the 2016 election had been stolen from Hillary Clinton. Challenges to election results, even far-fetched ones, are nothing new.

The violent assault on the U.S. Capitol was inexcusable. President Trump obviously intended for his rally to morph into an epic protest — but his failure to corral it when it got out of hand was inexcusable as well, and it effectively disqualifies him from future elective service (although that of course, is a matter for the electorate to decide).

Regarding the peaceful transfer of power, we can argue forever what might have happened, or would have happened, or what Trump wanted to happen. But the only thing knowable for sure is what did happen — and that is that the certification was delayed for all of six hours, a pause barely noticeable in the usual snail-speed of congressional actions.

The political consequences of the Democrats’ January 6th extravaganza remain to be seen. Perhaps, presumably as intended, it will disable their nemesis, Donald Trump. But it may backfire, paint Trump as a martyr, increase his popularity among his supporters and stoke his thirst for another presidential run. Or maybe it’s simply a go-for-broke political gambit by a party saddled with an unpopular president and stuck on the wrong side of a dozen serious issues.

Regardless, the events of 6 January 2021 revealed the sad state of affairs in American politics. Understanding and learning from them is a useful endeavor. But January 6th was not a turning point in American history; it was not the cataclysmic event portrayed by the Democrats; and pretending that the House investigation was a noble democracy-saving effort is pure nonsense.