Different parts of our species have different kinds of stupidity. Example:

After having lived nearly 20 years in Latvia and learning conversational Russian, I concluded that the fundamental difference between Russians and Americans is: America is a land of individual stupidity and collective genius, while Russia is exactly the reverse.

My UCLA classmate who studied the 1930s Stalin party purges in Leningrad in Soviet archives on a research grant agreed, but phrased it differently: "every time Russia has a choice between the practical and a tragedy, it chooses the latter."

I also lived 16 years in Italy and the first aphorism applies there too.