Preach brother, I don't think that's a hot take at all. I've become almost twice as productive since moving from c++ to c. I think I made the change when I was looking into virtual destructors and I was thinking, "at what point am I solving a problem the language is creating?" Another good example of this is move semantics. It's only a solution to a problem the language invented.
My hot take: The general fear of pointers needs to die.