I agree with you. I just cannot understand where people are coming from when they rush to defend the hierarchical organisation of society. It's just like you've attacked their religion.
They're coming from observation. IMO it's the obsession with destroying hierarchies and "democratization" that seems ideology-driven. Centralized solution are good at coordinating and bad at responding to local challenges. Distributed solutions are good at adapting to the local environment, but absolutely suck at coordinating. We have evidence for this evaluation all around us, in every second of our lives, starting with how our bodies are structured (hierarchy which is made of distributed elements at each level), going through basic social interactions (ever been to a YouTube party, or tried to organize a family trip?), and ending with politics.
Ah, the ol' "discredit my opponents by painting them as irrational extremists" tactic. Good show.
Maybe people are defending hierarchy because it's worked reasonably well in many different parts of their lives? Are there any large, successful businesses that aren't hierarchical? What about large governments?