I don't find this surprising nor a reason for celebration. This is caused due to several things:
1) Miners not following user/economy consensus by not implementing Segwit.
2) Increased usage demand.
3) Spam attack.
It is very easy to make the mempool go "crazy" if there is no more capacity within the blocks and the demand suddenly increases. Additionally, we shouldn't price fees in USD (as will do in this thread) due to the constant increase in the price.
Hooray for 220 satoshis per byte fees.
There's nothing wrong with that, and it won't likely change until we see Segwit getting adopted.
Theres no such thing as spam, if you can get a transaction included and pay for it its legit.
Spam are tx that are designed not for commerce but malicious intent.
If an address is pushing hundreds of txs to itself, while paying a reasonable
fee for block inclusion, in theory it is spam since it is not in accordance of
commerce exchange, but mempool bloating and meaningless block data.
Because some things are allowable by the protocol does not mean they are legit.
That just means that some malicious actions can not be reasonably constrained
currently. Your comment is equivalent to saying that "If I run red lights with my
car, but can afford paying the tickets/penalties, running red lights is fine/legit.".