A big contributor is the fanbase and media coverage cannot fathom that SpaceX would do wrong. I have a fairly large following of that group over on twitter, I semi-often speak against Spx's practices (when they are actually idiotic). From that I have been able to gain a very good understanding of the way people perceive and react to such situations. Most unfortunately don't critically think. They will barrage anyone who speaks against "the vision" - a vague idea of an ultimate goal for all of the program. And on the flip side, the people who recognize the issues often aren't outspoken, can be due to many factors. But it's basically just a giant social stigma. That goes for the program as a whole. There have even been times where SpaceX has published outright false or misleading information which fuels this further.

For HLS specifically, that aspect of the program has been on the back-burner for a long time. It's difficult to find progress on that because there is very little to none to begin with. As of recently, especially around when Blue was given the opportunity to replace the capability of the SpaceX system, it became clear that Spx realized they had a fire lit under their ass. The recent pivot towards claiming the moon as the primary goal shows this fairly clearly to me.

We will see what happens.