Beautifully put, poetic even. The only problem is that, in (*actual).reality, unsafe Rust is difficult to read, difficult to write, difficult to maintain, difficult to learn, has zero features for ergonomics, and has poorly defined rules.
C and Zig have a big advantage for writing maintainable, easy to read unsafe code over unsafe Rust.
> The only problem is that, in (*actual).reality, unsafe Rust is difficult to read, difficult to write, difficult to maintain, difficult to learn, has zero features for ergonomics
All true.
> and has poorly defined rules.
The rules aren't so poorly documented. The options for working with/around them, like say using UnsafeCell, do seem to be scattered across the internet.
But you omitted a key point: unlike C and Zig, unsafe code in Rust is contained. In the Rust std library for example, there are 35k functions, 7.5k are unsafe. In C or Zig, all 35k would be unsafe. If you are claiming those 35k unsafe lines in C or Zig would be easier to maintain safely than those 7.5k lines of unsafe Rust, I'd disagree.
I agree that unsafe Rust is not comfortable or simple, but I think it is usable when appropriately applied. It should very scarcely be used as a performance optimization. The Rust devs are quite invested in minimizing unsoundness in practice, particularly with Miri. In coming years, I expect unsafe to be further improved. Over the entire ecosystem, Rust with judicious use of unsafe is, in my opinion, vastly superior to C, unless the C is developed stringently, which is rare.