Aside note, but: "Hear, hear!". Until years ago, I would normally use that kind of mockery of absurd ideas by reciting adherence to impossible beliefs and opinions, with the implicit that nobody would hold them unless insane, so of course I was being purely ironic.

I do not do that anymore. The world is clearly full of cases for which absurdities are tenable - not by an odd minority, but by "(pseudo)random people". If you declare them, the presumption of irony is gone.