It started as a natural biological tendency - most packs/troops/tribes are hierarchical in some way. Then a few thousand years ago people figured out that power could be consolidated and concentrated by those who knew which psychological levers to pull and buttons to push in their tribe-mates. If you do it right, they will hand over power willingly, even eagerly. And concentrated power is the single most addictive drug known to man.
As technology grew slowly over the millennia, writing finally allowed the accumulation of knowledge and then the scientific method organized the growing body of knowledge. This process allowed the development of ever subtler and more powerful techniques of consolidating power and manufacturing the consent of those from whom the power was being removed.
It started well before Faux Noise, and isn't peculiarly American. You see the same effect in monarchies and dictatorships - in fact elements of it are visible in pretty well any society less than 5,000 years old. America added the refinement of having corporations instead of royalty be the power-holders (to permit wealth and power to be totally interchangeable), then finally added corporate personhood to complete the picture. Along the way, our social structures have been refined to support, defend and promote the hierarchy as the natural order of human society, with the corporation as its apotheosis.
I agree that the solution is to tell truth and reveal the lies. However, the question is, what is "truth"? There are so many levels and interpretations of everything that happens that it's very difficult to differentiate "truth" from learned principles taught by socially approved schools and media. The only core truth I'm even somewhat sure of is that our culture/society/civilization is a wholly artificial construct bearing more than a passing resemblance to the Matrix - a construct whose true goals are obscured by a manufactured consensus of "truth" that we all "agree" to.
To catch a glimpse of the latest evolution of this manufactured reality, read up on the
Powell Memorandum of 1971.
My outline of the "power pump" of modern cultural institutions is here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=271223&mesg_id=271228This understanding is what has caused me to discount any hope that the interlocked predicaments of energy use, ecological degradation and social inequality will find any institutional solutions. The institutions that count (i.e. the corporations and their handmaidens) are fundamentally uninterested in solving these problems, the problems are either essential to their existence or inevitable byproducts of it.
Estamos tan jodidos...