We have seen it many times: the mindless, reflexive recitation of a woke catechism that has no basis in reality.

Still, the performance feels different now. In fact, it almost seems as if the oblivious performer has somehow traveled to our time from the recent past.

Tuesday on social media platform X, conservative commentator Megyn Kelly excoriated Caitlin Clark of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever for the latter’s “sad” decision to acknowledge her own “white privilege” as the biggest superstar in a league dominated by black players.

“Look at this. She’s on the knee all but apologizing for being white and getting attention. The self-flagellation. The ‘oh pls pay attention to the black players who are REALY the ones you want to celebrate,’ ” Kelly wrote.

“Condescending. Fake. Transparent. Sad,” the longtime journalist and popular conservative podcaster concluded.

Clark’s unfortunate comments appeared Tuesday in Time Magazine, which named her its Athlete of the Year.

“I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege,” she said.

The WNBA’s 2024 Rookie of the Year then elaborated on that false and disgusting core tenet of critical race theory.

“A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been black players. This league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it’s very important. I have to continue to try to change that,” she said.

Unfortunately, Time’s story also quoted two of Clark’s peers, both black.

Temi Fagbenle, Clark’s teammate on the 2024 Fever and now a member of the expansion Golden State Valkyries, insisted that nothing has changed in the United States since its inception.

“America was founded on segregation, and to this day is very much about black and white,” Fagbenle said.

Likewise, three-time WNBA MVP A’Ja Wilson attributed Clark’s popularity to skin color.

“It doesn’t matter what we all do as black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug,” Wilson compained. “That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race, because it is.”

In some ways, of course, all of these young women qualify as victims of racial propaganda. They have heard that kind of nonsense so often in schools and popular culture that they repeat it uncritically.

Does Fagbenle really believe that nothing has changed in America since 1960, let alone the nation’s inception?

And does Wilson really believe that she has the power to read others’ hearts with such clarity that the mere denial of race-based motives actually causes her blood to boil?

In the days of segregation, many white men did hold positions of authority that they did not earn or deserve. And they held those positions because of sex and skin color. Americans eventually recognized that as wrong.

It was equally wrong, however, when Vice President Kamala Harris, despite her myriad deficiencies as a thinker and speaker, was chosen as President Joe Biden’s running mate because she is (apparently) a black woman, and it was equally wrong when Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, despite her authoritarian views and near-total ignorance of the Constitution, was chosen for the Supreme Court because she is a black woman.

Those things happened, too. Far from sweeping black women “underneath the rug,” Americans have elevated some unworthy individuals solely on account of sex and skin color, just as they once did with white men.

Wilson’s “swept underneath the rug” comment, therefore, reflected not only a lie, but the opposite of truth.

And Clark endorsed that lie — uncritically, mechanically, as if programmed to do so.

Kelly, of course, had it right.

She did not, however, tell the whole story.

President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election felt like the end of this nonsense. It signaled that the majority of Americans have had enough and now refuse to play the woke racists’ game.

Thus, Clark’s “self-flagellation” seemed to belong more to the oppressive atmosphere of 2020, as if Clark either teleported here from the dark recent past or simply ignored the memo that we are not doing this anymore.

That alone gives cause for hope.