If this is such an emergency, why weren't they concerned about such transactions being mined before? It was possible, and yet no one was running around screaming about it.

Unless I'm mistaken, a user could have configured datacarriersize to be 100kb in many prior versions of Core. Also there was Libre relay, which I think would have relayed such transactions. Why wasn't this an emergency last year or the year before?

I don't like being pressured into doing things because people falsely claim it's an emergency.