Fatimah Ali: The rage in PoliticsLand, U.S.A.

IF WE pay close enough attention, people frequently show us exactly who they are.

Keen observation lets us obtain telling information by evaluating revealing clues from their deeds, words and body language, as well as the company they keep. We also have Facebook, Twitter and blogs - all can be sharp indicators of what's in our hearts.

When Sarah Palin first took the national stage two years ago and said, "The difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick," she gave us a heads-up about her mentality. So we shouldn't be surprised by the crosshairs found on her Facebook page or the words in her tweets: "Don't retreat, instead - RELOAD."

Unfortunately, there are some out there who might be weak enough to take action when she tells raucous crowds that, back where she comes from, "they shoot their enemies right between the eyes."

Although I think she's more a mean-spirited dimwit with a loose tongue than a frontline general, Palin does have enough charisma to appeal to a certain segment. She and political talkers Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh (to name a few) regularly use their platforms to stoke the flames of hatred because they resent America's growing diversity.

The Census Bureau projects that Americans identified as "white" will be in the minority by midcentury, and this may be one of the reasons driving some tea partiers to turn incendiary.

Chants of "We want our country back," as well as some recent threats to some members of Congress are likely evidence of that. But it's one thing to voice an opinion at a rally, and another to damage their politicians' property or threaten to harm their families.

I understand that the tea partiers are frustrated about double-digit unemployment. But did they forget it was George Bush who sunk our economy with an unpopular Iraq war we could ill afford, and a $750 billion bank bailout that benefited overpaid CEOs, yet proved to be a huge flop for most Americans?

Although he believes the perpetrators of America's increasingly overheated political climate are in the minority, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson makes this assessment: "We've reached a point where some people's heads are about to explode."

I went to hear Robinson address the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last week. At the event Coalition President Sharmain Matlock-Turner said they chose Robinson to speak because he "helps continue the conversation about race in a comfortable way."

It's not easy being either a politician or a truth-teller in a national forum, and Robinson said he regularly receives racist e-mails from critics.

I know how that feels, having received many similar e-mails and threats myself. In December, a cinder block was thrown through my own front window, right after one of my columns appeared. Mercifully, no one was sitting in my living room at the time.

But for those who hail the mostly white, Republican tea partiers for exercising their freedom of speech, Robinson asks, "How can you love the skunk but not the stink?" It's a travesty that since the nation's first black president - Barack Obama - took office, a movement of such racist and homophobic vitriol has grown by leaps and bounds.

But the right-wing militias started long before Obama moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, between 2000 and 2008, the number of hate groups grew by 54 percent. And they're still growing. Their hate-fueled, anti-American sentiments will only serve to hurt this country.

And what drives their anger? Of the tea party protests, Robinson says some demonstrators are angry about their loss of perceived "white male privilege."

I think an undercurrent of that mentality has been part of the psychology in the belly of America ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock and began a process of settlement that eventually ended up with the slaughter of thousands of natives and the theft of their land.

And even long after the end of the enslavement of millions of black people, certain groups apparently still feel justified in their bigotry.

Fatimah Ali is a regular contributor to the Daily News, and blogs about food at healthysoutherncomforts.com.