Show Content HTML In Admin Area

I’m writing a word count plugin (my first plugin) and I need to be able to set a variable equal to the content of the post, with all HTML rendered (not & lt; and & gt;). I can’t find the filter to display the post content in the admin panel with HTML tags actually rendered. Here’s how I’ve done it:

$countpost = apply_filters('the_content', $post->post_content);
$countpost = attribute_escape($countpost);

// Put "<" and ">" back into any HTML code.
// WordPress filters otherwise only display "& lt;" and "& gt;"
$htmlentities = array("<", ">", "&quot;");
$htmltags   = array("<", ">", '"');
$countpost = str_replace($htmlentities, $htmltags, $countpost);

// Oddly enough, now we can strip those things we just put back in.
// Remove white space and html
$countpost = preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ', strip_tags($countpost));

There’s got to be an easier way to display the_content instead of displaying it, replacing all & lt; and & gt; with < and >, then doing strip_tags on it.