As Holly Golightly pointed out, there are rats and there are super rats. And these days there are so many rats it’s hard to tell who’s the rattier. The financial sleazebags with their empty promises and empty bank accounts? The toxic mortgage hustlers? The arrogant, bloated CEOs who continue to frolic?

If you’re looking for someone to blame this mess on, there are plenty of rats to go around. Maybe even those politicians who had to be excused from high office for not paying their taxes.

But don’t get mad at your neighbor. Don’t blame the luckless homeowner who bought at too high a price with too little money down. A lot of us did that, but got away with it…at least, so far. This is no time to be throwing rocks at glass houses, considering so many of us are living in them.

And don’t get mad at unions for providing workers a decent enough wage so that teachers and police officers and nurses can live in the same town where they work. And don’t bully the business owners not as savvy as you, who didn’t have the financial cushion to get through hard times.

The worst thing that could happen to this country – worse than a Depression and double digit unemployment – is that we turn on each other. And America the once Strong and Proud becomes America the Stingy and Spiteful.

The rats are happy to see us mice picking on each other.

What good comes from being mean and reckless, calling people “losers,”  like those high profile windbags who stir up an anxious populace. The ones who claim that mortgage reform plans only encourage bad behavior. And who, worse, become part of that still tiny but screeching minority that seem to want President Obama’s ideas to fail so they can do… what? Say goodbye to “hope?”

It’s easier to understand why common people buy houses they can’t afford than it is to understand how the biggest money brains in the world made such colossal blunders to cause a global financial collapse. We all wanted our piece of paradise even though everyone said the housing bubble would burst. But the realtor said it was a deal, the appraiser said it was worth it and the lender said you qualified. So tell me where to sign those loan papers, which would be sold to another lender the next day.

Americans may get annoyed with the excesses of the rich but they take personal affront at the bad luck of the poor. And don’t think that the rats aren’t happy to see us mice picking on each other.

I think this is a test. We can grumble and point fingers or we can tighten our collective belts and get through this crisis without hurting each other. We can believe that, “We will rebuild and we will recover,” as President Obama said in his speech to Congress. And we can do it in a neighborly fashion. Trade our backyard tomatoes for eggs from the guy with chickens down the street.

Getting mad, even at rats, gets us nowhere.

It is a testament to American optimism that in the face of all the furies being heaped on us so many continue to be relatively upbeat. We are robustly hopeful despite each new day’s reports of stores closing, companies collapsing, even people offering to work for free if they can keep their health care. We remain expectant that something will eventually start to turn around. Pretty soon…tomorrow, certainly sometime this year.

The new guy in Washington, the one we’re counting on to get this economy back on track, is trying to fix things. He wants.. many of us want.. his stimulus package to go forth. We really can’t wait much longer because the crisis is moving in downtown, next door. Into the living room.

And yet some people in Washington say wait longer. People who must feel personally secure in their own jobs, homes and retirement portfolios. They say the plan isn’t perfect enough. They want to rip it up and start over. Too risky. No guarantees. What if it doesn’t work?

Well, we are in scary dark waters. Unchartered ones, for sure. The worst crisis in most people’s memory. But we need to keep moving. I think we need to take a lesson from Charlie and Rosie.

Like now, going round and round isn’t an option.

You know Charlie and Rosie – from the movie “The African Queen,” trying to escape down an un-navigable river, moving from one disaster to the next in their small wooden boat, fired at by German soldiers, attacked by leeches and swarms of insects that made them go almost out of their minds. But there could be no backing up, even when it meant plunging over killer falls and tumbling into rapids.

At one point they come to a part of the river that turns into a maze of narrow, twisting channels full of reeds, with no obvious way out. Rosie says something to Charlie like “Where is the main channel? What do we do? We can’t just go round and round.” Charlie doesn’t know and tells her to choose. He says something like “You pays your money, you takes your chances.” Rosie points and away they go.

Just like now, going round and round isn’t an option. We can’t wait for Congress to pick apart this crisis and keep arguing about what to do. A lot of the critics have been thundering down Plunder Road for years. Now they’ve turned into a bunch of Nervous Nay Sayers. If they had such great alternative solutions why are we just now hearing about them? It’s not like this crash just began.

I don’t understand all the details of the stimulus package. I like that unemployed workers would keep their health insurance, that unemployment checks would be extended. No teachers would be laid off. Money would go into weatherizing houses and other green projects. The plan to reinforce bridges and roads would be welcome, especially here in earthquake country.

There is no certainty of course. It’s a crap shoot. But I’d rather trust the new guy than the old ones who are dragging their wingtips. Let’s get going. Start stimulating.

Charlie and Rosie made their choice and ended up stuck on the mud, sick with fever, dying, they thought. But then…well it all turned out okay. Luck was on their side, maybe because they had the guts to move. We should be as brave.