Will McAvoy, the anchor on HBO’s Newsroom, is frequently more honest and ethical than most television journalists in the “real” world. In the season finale of the program McAvoy does it again with an editorial that enumerates the characteristics of the Tea-publican Party:

Ideological purity

Compromise as weakness

A fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism

Denying science

Unmoved by facts

Undeterred by new information

A hostile fear of progress

A demonization of education

A need to control women’s bodies

Severe xenophobia

Tribal mentality

Intolerance of dissent

A pathological hatred of the U.S. government

And McAvoy concludes by saying that…

“They can call themselves the Tea Party. They can call themselves conservatives and they can even call themselves Republicans, though Republicans certainly shouldn’t. But we should call them what they are. The American Taliban.”

It’s never been said better. Here’s the video: