Where is the edit button in my individual contact?

If screen time and restrictions are involved, then it's possible the editing of contacts is being limited by such settings.

If you are part of a Family Sharing group, the family organizer may have set up restrictions for your device if the logged in account is set to an age of a minor.

Or someone is setting restrictions on another device using your Apple account and set to sync the settings to all devices.

Basically, you need to verify why Screen time has been activated.

It's obvious you are very angry, but you need to know you are posting in a community forum, where Apple users volunteer to try to help other Apple users with technical issues. Talking to us like that is not going to get people to help you any quicker. In fact, it may turn some of the experts away.

redfrombirmingham wrote:

Every web search I do says there is an Edit button in the upper right hand corner of my contact

Yep - from this screen in the Contacts app:

Sorry, but I cannot duplicate what you are reporting regarding the Edit button.

It's right there in the upper right hand corner on the last 8-10 random Contacts that I checked as a test.

Are you possibly using a CardDAV (address) server and not iCloud or local storage? Maybe using Exchange Server?