Boss Hogg was a corrupt politician and a main character. I don’t remember much beyond that. But my memory is that the Duke Boys were escaping persecution from local state actors.
Side note: I was a little kid and my friends in pre-school thought the car could fly, which broke my brain when I couldn’t articulate that it jumped.
Not to mention Scooby-Doo, where each episode revealed that the monster was some grown-up authority figure abusing his power.