"secretive and villainous" is a great match for systemd. It's also pretty good for PulseAudio, NetworkManager, and avahi. These have all been heavily pushed by redhat.
A great example is GNOME adding a systemd requirement. The key developers are employed by Red Hat, and Red Hat chose systemd, so no consideration needs to be given to the possibility that a Linux distribution might not want systemd. This is how Debian was forced into systemd.
The projects very clearly do not give consideration to criticism. Choices are made by the Red Hat teams, and that is that.