Rust takes power away from the programmer because it makes it completely impossible to do things that people often very well have a damn good reason for doing, forcing developers to make bloated, slow programs, all done in a crazed pursuit of "safety"
The developers did actually recognize that this could be an issue, hence "unsafe blocks". You're just not really meant to use them all the time, and it isolates the unsafety to those regions.
This isn't accidental—it's explicitly stated as its goal. It's a bit like governments banning books because "think of the children!!!11!!!" except nowhere near as big of a deal.
I do not think it's particularly valid to compare equate government "safety" to programming language "safety", and not just because of unsafe blocks. It is generally easier to opt out of writing in a particular programming language than it is to opt out of a government doing a thing.
In addition, it locks programmers and users into a specific ecosystem, which people get all pissy about when proprietary-software companies do it, yet when Rust does it it's for some reason seen as okay despite being just as much of a hostile tactic.
There are some Rust libraries which export C-usable interfaces, most notably regex, which I believe is actually being trialled as a replacement for Python's re module.
Furthermore, the official community surrounding Rust uses an immoral code of law that allows for infinite punishment to be given to people, allows punishment to be given without a fair trial, and allows punishment for actions committed outside of the jurisdiction of the Rust community.
I mean, I haven't looked at this, but I think most communities informally work this way anyway.