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Lord Kelvin comes immediately to mind. And there are plenty of gentry, such as Charles Darwin.
I don't think Turok really cares about class, though; it's just a stick to beat people he disagrees with. Kind of a silly one, though, since if you're on the right in America today you probably believe that the "elites" and the "PMC" have been fucking it up by the numbers, so the stick really has no bite.
I meant nobles by birth. Brahe was a born noble, Kelvin was elevated to the peerage for his work. As with Darwin, "Son of a wealthy man" or "Son of a merchant" or especially "Son of a wealthy merchant"/"mother's father was a wealthy merchant" is a common descriptor for many great mathematicians and scientists. There is something to be said of the requirements and traits needed to become and succeed as a merchant. Serfs these were not, but no one in this forum could be said as being of "serf stock," and few if any could be found in most active discussions of politics on the internet. I would guess most people here don't ever interact with them beyond the most basic of retail and service workers.
It's like -- there was this shooting years ago at a Madden tournament. For those surprised that football video games have esports competitions, this was also news to me. It was a small tournament, but still. I knew the games sold well and yet I never actually considered it because it took hearing about that shooting to realize all along this entirely separate and parallel ecosystem existed. Many millions of people play shooters, but there's insignificant overlap between them and the many millions playing sports games.
There's insignificant overlap between people discussing politics online at all strata and the actual "serfs." The actual "serfs" have smart phones because everybody has them, but they're not arguing about human capital. It's what you've said, class as a stick, because this is really intraclass competition in form of those of supposed status sneering. You want to see the actual low class? You already know it, everybody does. YouTube comment sections, that's the parallel ecosystem where the "serfs" roam.
Ah, I had not realized (or remembered) that Lord Kelvin wasn't born that.
Oddly, some people in my family talk about us being "good peasant stock", but it isn't actually true; they were shopkeepers and skilled laborers in the old country.
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I'd say I'm pretty close, though — particularly compared to most people here. Functionally-illiterate high school dropout handyman father, stay-at-home mother, grew up in low-population-density Alaska (including time in a community so rural, it lacks electricity, and has a community well for water).
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Actual working class people I know all loved and were very excited by Trump, albeit usually not in a high IQ way. 'He said no taxes on tips/overtime!'. Nearly all the undecided voters I described in my post a while back pulled the lever for him over, mostly, those two policies.
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