> I see a lot of people talking about "fighting the borrow checker" with Rust

It's also usually described as "at first, I fought the borrow checker, but then I internalized its rules and it's now second nature." You're not wrong that it's a hump to get over, but once you do, it's not a big deal.

  > that would be simple in any other language, 

Any other _GC'd_ language. You still fight the same kinds of complexity when you don't have GC.