wasmtime exists

yes i love to use a language runtime within another language runtime for a sweet sweet 30% performance penalty

Why the snark? wasmtime is a (pretty popular) Rust project which uses a JIT, demonstrating that it's not incompatible with Rust. Obviously a proper VM wouldn't depend on wasmtime, but implement its own JIT and paraphernalia.

fair. i guess i used “rust” in collective noun sense for “rust the ecosystem and community”; from my armchair experience there’s a big contingent of that community that abhors unsafe and software that uses it, and it’s that community/ecosystem aspect that prohibits unsafe since of course the language and compiler support it just fine.

The community does not abhor use of unsafe. The community abhors bad usage of unsafe: unsafe code should be used only when necessary, and ideally to build safe abstractions.