And here is how I view OP in this. They gave them a bin to stick it in.
When I ran an old school forum we had a group that insisted in pushing conspiracy theories they caused a lot of trouble. I did not want to ban them but I needed to stop the problem.
If I banned them they would of just created new accounts, used new IPs and kept being a problem.
I created a board for them, called it "The Tin Foil Hat Club" and said go nuts but post on other boards you get banned. The problem stopped being a problem.
The biggest spam problem we had was well prior to OP-Return, you can't change that. Since OP-Return changed feed went DOWN not up. There is no problem.
If you want a pure monetary network if you really think that is "the way" try Litecoin, we have had it for 14 years. And if having one would create mass adoption (something 110ers now claim it will) why didn't we have it before last year and why does no one use Litecoin or any of the other pure and faster monetary blockchains?
The more you look at this the more you understand cores decisions.